How much capacity (bed counts) do CoreCivic‑ and GEO‑owned facilities contribute to ICE’s nationwide detention total?
Executive summary
CoreCivic and GEO Group together account for a substantial share of the detention beds available to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), but exact nationwide bed counts attributable to those two companies cannot be precisely derived from public reporting; available sources document thousands of recently reactivated or reopened beds (GEO: 6,600; CoreCivic: multiple facilities totaling roughly 6,000 in cited examples) and characterize the two firms as the largest private suppliers of ICE detention space [1] [2] [3] [4]. Reporting also offers broader, contested estimates that private firms supply a majority — in some accounts 70–80% — of ICE bed capacity, implying CoreCivic and GEO together supply a large fraction of ICE’s private-bed total, but those percentage figures are not broken down into a single verified national bed count in the source material [5] [4].
1. What the sources actually document: facility-level additions and reactivations
Investigative and policy outlets report concrete, recent bed additions tied to the two corporations: GEO Group has reactivated four facilities that together add about 6,600 beds for ICE (reported by both the Brennan Center and Just Security) [1] [2], while CoreCivic has publicized reopening or reactivating several large sites — the California City Immigration Processing Center (2,560 beds), the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley (2,400 beds), and a proposed Leavenworth contract of about 1,033 beds — among other projects referenced in reporting [1] [3]. Those facility-level counts are verifiable in the cited coverage and together amount to roughly 12,600 beds explicitly documented across the two companies in recent reporting [1] [2] [3].
2. The wider picture: private-sector share versus the two companies’ slice
Several sources situate CoreCivic and GEO as the dominant private suppliers within a broader private detention sector that accounts for a majority of ICE capacity; one data aggregator asserts private firms hold 70–80% of ICE beds and identifies CoreCivic and GEO as the primary actors [5], and the ACLU summary frames those corporations as controlling “the overwhelming majority” of privately operated ICE detention [4]. These are framing statements, not line-by-line national bed inventories; if taken at face value they imply CoreCivic and GEO together represent a very large share of ICE’s private-bed total, but the underlying breakdown of national contractual capacity by company is not supplied in the sources [5] [4].
3. Policy goals and corporate readiness: why bed counts are rising
Multiple articles link the surge in announced bed capacity to federal policy and funding choices — large ICE budgets and explicit detention targets have incentivized reactivations and reopening of idle private facilities — with analysts and company earnings calls describing plans to push toward much higher national capacity (some reporting references to 100,000-bed targets and large budget allocations) [6] [7] [8]. Those dynamics explain why reporters can cite numerous corporate facility-reactivations and contracts; they do not, however, equate to a single authoritative tally of how many of ICE’s total beds nationwide are owned or operated by CoreCivic and GEO at this exact moment [6] [7] [8].
4. Limits of the public reporting and alternative readings
Public reporting supplies facility-specific counts and clear evidence that CoreCivic and GEO have added thousands of beds recently, but it stops short of publishing a reconciled national inventory that attributes every ICE contractual bed to a named operator; multiple pieces therefore offer estimates or proportional claims rather than a single, audited total [1] [2] [5]. Advocacy groups emphasize the corporations’ centrality and profit motives [4] [9], while industry and financial coverage focus on revenue and capacity growth as business metrics [1] [8]. The divergence between these frames signals both competing agendas in the sources and a factual gap: firm-level facility counts are available for many projects, but a consolidated, source-cited nationwide bed count attributable specifically to CoreCivic and GEO is not present in the material provided.
5. Bottom line — best-supported answer
Based on reporting that documents specific facility reactivations and reopenings, CoreCivic and GEO have added or reactivated on the order of at least ~12,600 beds between cited projects (GEO ~6,600; CoreCivic ~6,000 in named facilities), and multiple sources characterize the two companies as the largest private providers of ICE detention space — which, by independent estimates reported, make up the majority of ICE’s private capacity [1] [2] [3] [5] [4]. A single definitive national bed count for just CoreCivic‑ and GEO‑owned ICE capacity is not published in these sources, so any narrower figure would require ICE contract-level data or a consolidated facility inventory beyond the cited reporting.