When President-elect Trump takes office on Monday, he has vowed that one of his first priorities will be a mass deportation effort. An estimated 11 million immigrants are in the US without legal status. Trump's plan raises a variety of concerns - from civil rights to logistics. One logistical question is where so many detainees would be held.
Here are four things to know about what's already happening, even before Trump takes office.
Government officials and companies who run detention facilities are preparing.
Before someone is deported, they are usually detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, in one of around 130 facilities nationwide. The vast majority of those are owned or operated by private prison companies that contract with ICE.
A spokesperson for GEO Group, one of those private companies, told NPR in a statement they are investing $70 million toward more housing, transportation and monitoring capabilities.
On the government side, last year the Biden administration began exploring the possibility of adding facilities in at least eighteen states. Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney at the ACLU National Prison Project, says that could prove useful to the next administration.
"Our concern, of course, is that the Biden administration has been moving to lay down the groundwork for expansion of detention facilities," Cho said. "The Trump administration might be able to pick up quite quickly from those plans."
Some state officials are eager to help. Texas officials promised Trump 1,400 acres to use as a detention camp, about the size of a thousand football fields. Arizona Republican Sen. John Kavanagh plans to introduce a bill to offer ICE two empty state prisons, leased for a dollar a year each.
"We were using both of them until recently. It's just that we ran out of prisoners. So we closed them," Kavanagh said. "It's kind of like opening up the old country house in the spring."
There are financial incentives for private companies housing immigrants.
In 2023, GEO Group made more than $1 billion through contracts with ICE, amounting to a little more than 40% of its total revenue. Another private prison company, CoreCivic, made more than $500 million, about a third of its total revenue that year.
They would likely stand to make more if mass deportations come to fruition: The day after Trump won a second term, stock values for both companies soared.
"Picture a direct line from taxpayer dollars to these private prison companies for the sole purpose of locking people up in immigration detention facilities, where the interest of these corporations is to be accountable to their shareholders and fatten their bottom line," Cho said.
Representatives for GEO Group and CoreCivic didn't comment on profits, but stressed that they adhere to government standards. Both companies declined requests for interviews.
"We are proud of our record of working closely with federal, state, and local government agencies to ensure that all persons entrusted to our care are treated in a safe, secure and humane manner," a GEO Group spokesperson said in a statement.
The spokesperson for CoreCivic told NPR in a statement that the company is helping the government solve a problem the public has made clear it wants fixed.
"All our immigration facilities operate with a significant amount of oversight and accountability," the CoreCivic spokesperson said. "Our immigration facilities are also audited regularly and without notice several times a year."
Many sheriffs want to aid in deportations.
Immigrants facing removal are often detained in county jails that rent out space to ICE or to private prison companies. That helps create a critical revenue stream for many municipalities. The Department of Homeland Security estimates it costs about $150 a day to detain an adult.
There has been resistance among some law enforcement to work with ICE, who say collaborating with immigration authorities could erode public trust.
But Jonathan Thompson, executive director of the National Sheriffs' Association, said there is "significant willingness" among the nation's more than 3,000 sheriffs to help, offering bed space or participating in the federal 287(g) program, which gives local law enforcement authority to perform certain immigration duties.
Sheriff Brian Kozak in Laramie County, Wyo., says his jail has more than 200 empty beds he plans to offer to ICE.
"If they're going to be detained and held somewhere, our jail offers pretty good resources to help people in their transition," said Kozak, who also plans to join the 287(g) program.
Kozak said his jail already has an agreement with the U.S. Marshals Service to hold people for $120 a day, and imagines the reimbursement from ICE would be similar. Most of his empty bed space is already accounted for in the jail's budget.
"Anyone that we hold above and beyond that is then just extra revenue that we have, that we normally would not have."
But many jails nationwide are understaffed. Because of that, Thompson says detaining so many people would be a significant challenge.
"This is a dollar money issue. This is a manpower issue," Thompson said. "Realistically, how would it work? It wouldn't work. It wouldn't be safe. It wouldn't be constitutional."
Advocates say detaining millions comes with a big price tag - and human rights concerns.
The American Immigration Council estimated that deportation on such a massive scale could cost more than $300 billion. For context, Congress allocated around $3 billion for immigration detention last year.
"Where does that money come from? What are we going to cut? We have finite resources," said Jacqueline Watson, second vice president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
Watson stressed that detention also comes with important humanitarian considerations. In recent years, the government's own inspections of ICE detention facilities have found unsafe conditions, negligent medical care and lax oversight. Trump's transition team and officials at ICE did not respond to a request for comment or an interview.
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