Private Prison in Eastern N.C. May Reopen for Immigration Detention

This story is a collaboration between the newsletter Down from DC and The Assembly.

The company that owns North Carolina’s only private federal prison facility is negotiating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies to reopen it as a detention center, potentially for immigrants awaiting deportation.

Rivers Correctional Institution, in rural Hertford County, closed in 2021 when the Biden administration ended federal contracts with the private prison industry, citing dangerous conditions at those facilities. 

ICE has contracts with county jails in Alamance and New Hanover counties for about 30 prisoners, but a contract with Rivers, which has capacity for more than 1,000 prisoners, could introduce large-scale detention of immigrants to North Carolina and a return to for-profit detention in a state where immigration enforcement remains a deeply partisan issue.

The GEO Group, among the largest private prison companies in the country, told investors last month that it was talking with ICE about reopening Rivers and five other idled prisons as part of the $45 billion expansion in immigration detention Congress approved in the massive budget and spending bill it passed this summer.

George C. Zoley, executive chairman of GEO, described the negotiations during an August 6 call with investors about second-quarter earnings. He named Rivers and prisons in Texas, California, New Mexico, and Colorado as the six he hoped to reopen. Combined, the facilities would hold 5,900 people.

“We are in active discussions with both ICE and U.S. Marshals Service for the potential activation of these facilities,” Zoley said on the call, adding: “We continue to be pleased with the pace of these contract discussions and remain optimistic that additional contract awards will materialize during the third and fourth quarters of the year.”

Christopher V. Ferreira, director of corporate relations for GEO, referred questions about the potential reopening of Rivers to ICE. ICE did not reply to multiple emails or a phone call requesting comment.

An August Washington Post story identified Rivers as part of an unprecedented expansion in detention to temporarily hold the immigrants the Trump administration intends to deport. The Post obtained ICE internal documents which reportedly indicate a detailed plan for a vast system of public and private prisons to meet ICE’s goal of doubling detentions from 50,000 to more than 100,000 by January. The Post reports that GEO stands to gain at least nine new or modified detention contracts worth $500 million.  

This week, the Post followed up that story with a close look at the safety records of three of the facilities under consideration by the Trump administration–including one operated by GEO in Texas–and found a history of violence and abuse with fewer standards today than under earlier administrations for humane treatment of prisoners. An ICE official told the Post that specific facilities laid out in the planning documents obtained by the newspaper could change.

Even before Congress approved money for new detention facilities, federal authorities had been setting up centers to hold the surging number of detainees being held for violating immigration law. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis invoked emergency powers to build one such facility at a remote airfield in the Everglades, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.” The makeshift facility holds 3,000 in what news reports describe as unsanitary conditions, with migrants living in mosquito-infested tents. A federal judge in Florida ordered it closed last month over violations of environmental protection rules, but an appeals court last week overruled that order to keep the facility open.

The largest detention facility, a 1,000-bed tent camp, opened last month at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, with a planned expansion to 5,000. The Trump administration now faces questions over the $1.2 billion building contract awarded to a company, Acquisition Logistics, with no prior prison experience.

GEO has contracted with federal agencies for decades. Rivers closed in 2021, when the Federal Bureau of Prisons let its contract with GEO expire as part of an overall policy to shrink the federal prison system, especially its reliance on for-profit facilities.  

President Joe Biden laid out that policy in an executive order he signed at the beginning of his term. “There is broad consensus that our current system of mass incarceration imposes significant costs and hardships on our society and communities and does not make us safer,” the order said. “To decrease incarceration levels, we must reduce profit-based incentives to incarcerate by phasing out the Federal Government’s reliance on privately operated criminal detention facilities.”

The executive order also cited dangerous conditions for inmates and staff at private prisons as a reason for ending those contracts. “The Federal Government also has a responsibility to ensure the safe and humane treatment of those in the Federal criminal justice system,” the order read, citing a 2016 report by the Inspector General of the Department of Justice that found that “privately operated criminal detention facilities do not maintain the same levels of safety and security for people in the Federal criminal justice system or for correctional staff.”

That report, which included findings from a visit by inspectors to Rivers, described high rates of violence, contraband, inadequate medical care, and drug use among all 14 private federal prisons. Of the North Carolina prison, the report said: “Rivers had the highest rates of contraband finds (excluding cell phones), inmate assaults on staff, uses of force, guilty findings on inmate discipline cases, inmate grievances, positive drug tests, inmate-on-inmate sexual misconduct and the lowest phone monitoring rate.”

When it closed four years ago, Rivers held 1,450 inmates, mostly migrants serving sentences for criminal convictions before being deported and about 160 U.S. citizens with criminal convictions from Washington, D.C., many of them mentally ill, according to press reports. The 336 people who worked at Rivers at the time were laid off. According to the GEO website, Rivers now has capacity for 1,320 prisoners.

U.S. Rep. Don Davis (D-N.C.), whose district includes Hertford County, said in an email: “It is crucial that any facility converted into an ICE detention center complies with operational standards to ensure the humane treatment of its detainees. I would expect nothing less. I also believe that stakeholders, including community members, should be included in these discussions.”

U.S. Sens. Thom Tillis and Ted Budd, both Republicans from North Carolina, did not respond to requests for comment.

In the first six months of his administration, President Donald Trump has made good on his campaign promise to crack down on undocumented immigrants. As of the end of August, the number of immigrants in detention had reached an all-time high of 61,226 according to Austin Kocher, a researcher at Syracuse University who publishes a newsletter on immigration data.  

On the campaign trail, Trump frequently railed against “the worst of the worst” and “Biden’s migrant crime.” But his administration has not solely focused on removing convicted criminals–far from it. So far, according to Kocher’s analysis, only 36 percent of those detained have criminal convictions, while about a third face criminal charges for which they have not yet been tried. The last third are accused only of immigration violations. 

ICE has arrested 2,200 people in North Carolina since President Trump took office, but the enforcement activity here has not been as visible as in larger urban centers like Los Angeles, Miami, and New York. According to press reports, about 60 percent of undocumented immigrants deported from North Carolina were not arrested in raids of businesses or homes. Rather, they were already in jail and turned over to ICE by local sheriffs.   

In their call with investors last month, officials at GEO said that the company is imprisoning 20,000 immigrants, the highest number in its history, through existing contracts with ICE at 21 facilities. These facilities could hold as many as 25,000. In addition to detention facilities, GEO officials said that the company also expects significant growth in its electronic monitoring of immigrants and ground transportation and flights used for deportations. Throughout the call, Zoley referred to “unprecedented growth opportunities” for GEO.  

The GEO group invested heavily in President Trump’s reelection. According to an analysis by ABC News, a subsidiary of GEO contributed $1 million to Make America Great Again Inc. In its earnings call with investors following the election, company officials predicted revenue growth of $400 million just from expanding or filling unused capacity at existing prisons. ABC quoted Zoley: “What is new is a potential sea change by the incoming Trump administration that is expected to implement a much more aggressive policy towards interior and border immigration enforcement.” 

In its most recent financial reports, GEO reported total revenue of $1.2 billion and net income of $48.6 million in the first six months of the year. Its leadership sees that increasing if the contracts for the six idle facilities are awarded. 

“If fully utilized, these six facilities could generate up to approximately $310 million in annualized revenue,” Zoley said in the August earnings call. 

Phoebe Zerwick is an award-winning journalist and author of the book Beyond Innocence: The Life Sentence of Darryl Hunt. She lives in Winston-Salem and is the co-author of Down from DC.