The Trump administration's expansion of immigration detention is reviving a model in which rural communities generate revenue by housing prisoners for the federal government, echoing practices dating back more than a century, according to an editorial by sociologist Ella Siegrist for The Conversation. Siegrist specializes in law and punishment.
The researcher points to West Virginia, where federal and District of Columbia prisoners were sent to state facilities beginning in 1876. The arrangement helped fuel a sevenfold increase in the state's prison population through 1908, while federal payments provided an important source of revenue.
A similar dynamic is emerging around immigration detention, the analysis argues. ICE pays hundreds of facilities across the country a daily rate to house detainees, providing revenue and, in some cases, jobs to rural communities.
In Indiana, for example, the state rents 1,000 beds at Miami Correctional Facility to ICE for $291 per detainee per day. In Minnesota, a private prison that closed in 2010 amid declining demand is expected to reopen as an ICE detention center, with state Sen. Torrey Westrom saying the facility could bring about 450 jobs to the area.
The expansion comes as federal spending on immigration enforcement and detention has risen sharply. According to a February analysis by the Prison Policy Initiative, federal spending on immigration and border policing and detention reached $54.3 billion in 2025, up from $20 billion in 2017. That represented 13% of all government spending on the criminal legal system.
The group also found that overall corrections spending increased by $24.8 billion between 2017 and 2025 even as correctional populations fell by more than one million people.
The economic incentives extend beyond private prison companies. The Prison Policy Initiative found that government agencies and public employees receive a far larger share of spending associated with incarceration, with state and local governments accounting for most corrections expenditures.
The historical parallel is particularly visible in West Virginia. During the Trump administration's expanded immigration enforcement campaign, the state housed ICE detainees for $90 per person per day before temporarily suspending new admissions this spring following federal court rulings involving due process violations.
"In the past, rural states and counties have built out their carceral systems with profit from imported prisoners," the sociologist wrote. "Immigration detention is reviving that model."
