PRISON BREAK

A Colorado town divides over a potential ICE contract.

- Isabela Dias

IN JANUARY 2010, the private prison operator now known as CoreCivic announced the closure of a 752-bed facility in Walsenburg, Colorado. At the time, the Huerfano County Correctional Center was the second-largest employer in the county. Its shutdown caused a “major hit” to the economy, said John Galusha, then the county's administrator. The town estimated a loss of $300,000 in revenue as almost 190 jobs disappeared, helping spike the county unemployment rate to 10.2 percent, above the state average. Without the contract that paid 25 cents a day per inmate into local coffers, Galusha said, “we had a hard time keeping up with the demand from social services.”

For the last 15 years, the facility has lain dormant. But that may soon change. Vested with a $45 billion immigration detention budget courtesy of Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to open or expand at least 125 facilities, with the goal of scaling up to more than 107,000 beds by the end of 2025, according to the Washington Post. Under ICE's ambitious blueprint, the 200,000-square-foot Walsenburg prison would not only be reactivated, but used to hold double the number of people it previously detained.

Trump's ballooning of what already is the world's largest immigration detention system has unleashed a gold rush among federal contractors eager to cash in. And nowhere are the economic incentives to take advantage greater than in struggling communities with empty prison beds.

“It’s a very hungry machine,” said Nancy Hiemstra, coauthor of