Image: The GEO Group logo is displayed outside of the Adelanto ICE Processing Center detention facility in Adelanto, California on July 10, 2025.  (Photo by Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)

As President Donald Trump continues his mass detention and deportation agenda and expands the use of privately owned immigrant prisons, with more than 60,000 people detained across the country, the profits of private contractors like the GEO Group and CoreCivic are skyrocketing—and a new report by a government watchdog reveals one method the multibillion-dollar firms have of extracting profits from detainees.

Public Citizen researcher Douglas Pasternak wrote in a report released Wednesday that approximately 50% of immigrants who are detained for more than a few days end up in the government’s so-called Voluntary Work Program (VWP), earning just $1 per day—12.5 cents per hour—while they keep the detention centers running.

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