A private prison in Lake County could reopen as part of its owner’s bid to finalize a contract with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to serve as an immigration processing center.
The 1,800-bed North Lake Facility, the state’s only private prison and located just north of Baldwin in Webber Township, is at the center of Boca Raton, Fla.-based Geo Group Inc.’s long-term contract with ICE, which it expects to finalize “within a few months.”
The company said it anticipates the contract “to include the exclusive use of the Facility by ICE, along with security, maintenance, and food services, as well as access to recreational amenities, medical care, and legal counsel.”
Geo expects to generate more than $70 million in annualized revenue in the first full year of operations, according to a statement.
“We expect that our company-owned North Lake Facility in Michigan will play an important role in helping meet the need for increased federal immigration processing center bedspace,” Geo Group Executive Chairman George Zoley said in a statement. “We are proud of our 40-year public-private partnership with ICE, and we stand ready to continue to help the federal government meet its expanded immigration enforcement priorities.”
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In a conference call with brokerage analysts last month, Geo Group CEO J. David Donahue described the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown as ushering in “an unprecedented time in our company’s history.”
“We believe the scale of the opportunity before our company is unlike any we’ve previously experienced and will, therefore, require a significant operational undertaking,” Donahue said in the call.
Zoley told analysts that Geo is “the largest single contractor to ICE” that, as of Feb. 27, was responsible for providing 40% of the agency’s detention beds.
“We believe we are well positioned to scale up our secure residential care housing from the current 15,000 beds to over 32,000,” Zoley said.
The company said in December that it planned to invest $70 million to expand its capacity to go after ICE contracts.
Geo Group’s role in serving as a detention center for ICE was first uncovered as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.
The Baldwin-area facility has whipsawed between a state of activation and idleness since it came online in 1999.
Most recently, it closed in 2022 after former President Biden ended all federal contracts with private, for-profit prisons. The facility had reopened in 2019 during the first Trump administration to house “non-U.S. citizen criminal aliens.”
Before that, Geo Group closed in 2017 at the end of a two-year, $15 million contract with the Vermont Department of Corrections to house 675 inmates at the medium- and maximum-security facility. Vermont ended up transferring fewer than 300 inmates to Lake County, leading Geo Group to not renew the contract.
The prison first opened after former Michigan Gov. John Engler signed a 20-year contract with a predecessor to Geo Group for what was then known as the 570-bed Michigan Youth Correctional Facility, at the time dubbed a “punk prison,” to brace for a wave of young violent super-offenders that never materialized.
It fell victim to the state budget in 2005, when Engler’s successor, former Gov. Jennifer Granholm, vetoed funding for the prison, which closed that year. Geo later expanded the facility to 1,740 beds in 2009, but has only been able to sign a series of short-lived contracts.
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