by Lilah Boig ‘26

Washington County for-profit ICE detention center has received criticism.

Following legal battles over a proposed private detention center in a neighboring Washington County warehouse, Montgomery County Councilmember Evan Glass introduced the “ICE out” bill, which would prevent privately owned immigration detention centers in the county. The Montgomery County Council has since taken serious steps against increased ICE activity by first passing the County Values Act, which restricts ICE from working on many government properties. Regarding his proposal, Glass announced through the Montgomery County Council Website that “neighboring jurisdictions have been forced to react to ICE detention centers quickly. Montgomery County will not wait.”

Mirroring the ones in Washington County, the development of private ICE detention centers has been on an extreme rise since Trump’s usage of ICE to detain migrants across the country. Over 90 percent of ICE detention centers are private and for-profit, primarily owned by the companies CoreCivic and GEO Group. Following Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” that granted unprecedented funding, these companies have amassed net worths of almost a billion dollars each.

Across the nation, in states red and blue, these for-profit ICE incarceration centers have received backlash. At one of CoreCivic’s California City centers, there have been repeated reports of “decrepit” and “punishing” conditions, resulting in more than 100 lawsuits. Resistance from the mostly Republican community also came in CoreCivic’s fight to use previously closed-down centers in Leavenworth, Kansas, led by a former employee of the building, who described how the facilities were previously closed due to inhumane conditions.

With Trump’s campaigning focusing on the sole detention of “dangerous criminals,” and then the reality of ICE detaining as many U.S. immigrants as they can, the Department of Homeland Security’s ability to properly handle the number of detainees has been overwhelmed. As prisons are built quickly, they are built profit-focused, leading to cuts in creating a healthy space and sustaining legal practices. Their lack of real regard has clearly led to utterly immoral practices within their incarceration system, this is alongside the immorality of ICE implementation in general. Human beings in these systems are left without access to lawyers, families are not given their whereabouts, and tragically will resort to suicide as their only way out. As well, allowing these private businesses to flourish off of immigration detentions, it creates an unfair space in which those in power lobby and secure policies that profit them. As they fight to keep the laws that oppress and attack immigrants, they line their pockets and disregard the aftermath of all of the detentions that are done.

It seems like it should be an easy moral point that nobody should profit off of the incarceration of other people but with MAGA propaganda hiding this behind the need to keep America “safe,” immigrants whose only crime is crossing a border are placed in warehouses with no beds to sleep in, and no chairs to eat in. It is clear to so many that this maximization of profit for ICE centers has no place in America. Rallying alongside representatives such as Evan Glass can prevent these companies from further growth, before it’s too late.