'If You Can Keep It': The Private Companies Profiting Off ICE

0:00This week on Up First, the State of the Union address is a civic ritual and a political event. But we'll be watching to see how a president with low approval ratings handles the moment. We are also watching the United States confrontation with Iran. Listen each morning for Overnight Developments. Up first on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

0:30President Trump's immigration crackdown has real human costs. Thirteen people have been shot by ICE and federal agents since September. At least three of those shootings killed American citizens, including Renee Macklin-Good and Alex Preddy in Minnesota and Ruben Ray Martinez in Texas last March. The number of people held in detention centers increased by nearly 75 percent in 2025. Around 68 ,000 people are currently detained in U.S. facilities, according to the latest ICE data. And those arrested with no criminal record rose by over 2 ,000 percent since Trump took office. That's according to a report last month from the American Immigration Council, a nonpartisan nonprofit focused on immigrant rights.

1:13But for private companies invested in the administration's agenda, that human cost also means a big paycheck. The private prison companies CoreCivic and the GeoGroup both report$2 billion or a 13 percent increase in revenue in 2025. The two companies opened nine new detention centers under contracts with ICE in the last year. For today's installment of our weekly politics series, If You Can Keep It, the private companies profiting from President Trump's immigration crackdown. But first, we check in on a different piece of this administration's mass deportation agenda, immigration courts and the legal system.

1:51I'm Jen White. And I'm Todd Zwilling. You're listening to the 1A Podcast. Back with more after a short break. Stay with us.

2:02Let's jump right into the conversation. Joining us in studio is Elliot Williams. He's a legal analyst for CNN and a guest host on 1A. He also served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Legislative Affairs of the Department of Justice from 2013 to 2017 and Assistant Director for Congressional Relations at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. His new book is called Five Bullets, the story of Bernie Goetz, New York's explosive 80s, and the subway vigilante trial that divided the nation. Elliot, it's always great to have you on. That's a lot of bio, Jen. That's a lot of bio. You read it all.

2:34Thank you. Good to talk to you. Also with us is Carol Lennox. She's a senior investigative correspondent at MSNOW, formerly MSNBC. She's also the author of the book Injustice, How Politics and Fear Vanquished America's Justice Department. Carol, it's great to have you. I'm glad to be here with all of you. We should note we reached out to the White House and the Department of Homeland Security for this conversation. We'll read a bit from the statements we received later. Carol, I first want to focus on this new initiative at DHS to investigate and prosecute naturalized U.S. citizens if they voted in elections before they gained citizenship.

3:08You've been reporting on this. What does this mean in practical terms for naturalized citizens? So when we first got this tip, and we're now talking about something that was about six days ago, But when we first got this tip that there was an effort by DHS and the Department of Justice to investigate naturalized citizens for potential voter fraud, there were two reactions we had. One, we got to figure out if this is true. And second, what in the world are we spending energy doing this? Why are we spending energy on this when there is almost an infinitesimal amount of voter fraud by naturalized citizens?

3:49The memo that we ultimately got confirmed that all field offices across the 50 states of DHS have been asked to open and review closed cases of potential suspected fraud by naturalized citizens to figure out, did they do anything wrong in their paperwork? Did they register to vote before they were officially naturalized, officially citizens? And this is a huge worry among all sorts of transparency advocates because it appears to be voter intimidation. Voter intimidation in what sense? This actually started back before the 2024 election when Donald Trump started talking about, not for the first time, but for the first concerted time, about undocumented people voting.

4:41It's never been a significant problem in American elections. Now it's extended to U.S. citizens. Yes. Right? This is a new level. Yes. And I'm so glad you say that, Todd, because the memo, actually, its subject line, which I thought was striking and also a little chilling, was potential voter fraud dash denaturalization. So the presumption was we're going to investigate people who are citizens and then we're going to remove them from the country if we find that there was fraud. Now, normally, I'd be a big fan of figuring out if there's fraud because I'm all about the rule of law. I'm a fan of that.

5:20But in this case, what's worrisome as a reporter is there's so, so little of this potential fraud. DHS offices are being asked to open up closed cases where presumably experts decided there was no fraud, nothing to see here. And we've got a memo subject line that says, we might kick these people out of the country. And we've already seen this Department of Justice being a little bit loosey-goosey with facts when it brings criminal cases already. The Trump administration has also explicitly said it wants to take away citizenship from naturalized Americans if it was found that they misrepresented information during the naturalization process.

6:03But it also set a quota of denaturalizing 100 to 200 people per month. And so the quota context here means that they've set a goal for themselves, Carol. So, I mean, put this all together for us. Connect the dots. It sounds like an a priori goal. We're going to denaturalize this many people. Go and get them for us. Well, I mean, beautifully said, both of you. And let's, I will put this in context, but let me give you the comparison, right? Remember when Stephen Miller, White House Deputy Chief of Staff-to-Be, announced that there was going to be a quota of X number of people per day that were going to be deported?

6:43And there was a claim that the worst of the worst immigrants are going to get removed from this country. Well, what did we find? DHS and ICE chasing children to their parents' homes who were salon technicians or roofers or restaurant workers had no criminal record. That's the stunning thing. Same thing with this parallel. We're going to hunt for people who are naturalized citizens that we, by quota, want to denaturalize. Whether or not we know yet whether or not any of them were engaged in any fraud, that is something as well that has been a priority of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who has called birthright citizenship an atrocity.

7:30and has said that he believes legal immigrants and their children are a very dangerous voting bloc. Elliot, I want to bring you in here because I think it's important to note that naturalized citizens made up more than half of the roughly 46 million immigrants in the U.S. in 2024. That's according to the Census Bureau. What legal rights do naturalized citizens have? To remain in the country unless the evidence is so overwhelming that, as Carol had said, they'd engaged in some act of fraud in the naturalization process or done something quite terrible, belonged to a terrorist organization or called for the open overthrow of the United States government.

8:13I will note that the legal standard for denaturalizing someone, just in law nerd terms, is a remarkably high standard. Like when, you know, the wording is clear, convincing, and unequivocal evidence. This is in the law that it takes to remove someone, or pardon me, to denaturalize someone. I can't think of another legal standard next to reasonable doubt. You know, the term that you hear about in all the cop and crime shows, that is that high. Sometimes it's clear and convincing evidence or even preponderance of the evidence that basically it's just more likely than not. No, you have to be pretty darn sure in the eyes of the law that someone has engaged in the kinds of acts I'm talking about, the fraud, the illegally procuring citizenship, sort of like not having eligibility requirements, not having lived in the country or, like I said, tied to a terrorist organization.

9:04Well, as we said, we reached out to the White House and the Department of Homeland Security. Here's part of what the White House spokesperson sent us. Quote, President Trump is committed to ensuring that Americans have full confidence in the administration of elections, and that includes totally accurate and up-to-date voter rolls, free of errors, and unlawfully registered non-citizen voters. The president has also urged Congress to pass the SAVE Act and other legislative proposals that would establish a uniform standard of photo ID for voting, prohibit no excuse mail-in voting, and in the practice of ballot harvesting.

9:34You'll find the full statement online at the 1A.org. So, Carol, when you hear that statement from the Trump administration and you look at this new charge, what are you hearing between the lines? Well, you know what's nice for people who are trying to follow the bouncing ball is that a lot of the administration officials say out loud the thing that is the most disturbing. And Kristi Noem, the Secretary of Homeland Security, on the Friday that this memo was dated, was in Arizona for a sort of surprise visit to promote the SAVE Act. And what she said was, I really feel it's my duty and responsibility, even though states are supposed to be responsible for voting, it's my duty and responsibility to help secure elections.

10:28and we want to make sure the right people are voting for the right leaders. Now, that's a slight paraphrase, but it's dang close to the exact quote. And when I look back at that in relationship to this DHS memo authored by her office, it told me what was going on for real. Briefly, Elliot? I would just say, just to put a finer point on the kinds of numbers we're talking about here, the Heritage Foundation, which is not known as a left-wing organization, found 24 instances of non-citizen voting from 2003 to 2024. This is out of millions of votes cast. You're talking about an infinitesimally small number.

11:07And we can even talk about where it is in state by state, but it's just not happening on the scope that they're talking about. More from our guests and from you in just a moment.

11:21Let's get back into our discussion of the Trump administration's immigration crackdown and how it's playing out in our legal system. Well, Elliot, I want to ask about the Trump administration's behavior in court over these past many months. And there are examples from all across the country. Just last week, a federal judge in California accused the Trump administration of terrorizing immigrants and violating the law to carry out mass deportation. Judge Sunshine Skies, as we were talking about, said the administration defied her December ruling and continued to illegally deny detained immigrants opportunities for release.

11:54We saw in New Jersey, the Justice Department acknowledged that it had defied more than 50 court orders. Judge in Minnesota accused the Trump administration of more than 100 instances of ignoring court's orders there. Of course, here in Washington, D.C., people like Judge Boasberg at the beginning of the deportation campaign still involved in controversy with the Trump administration over its behavior defying his orders and in some cases lying to the court. We had a judge recently hold a Justice Department attorney in contempt for refusing to return, I believe, an immigrant's documents, right? $500 a day in contempt.

12:34So I just gave a litany of some of the latest accusations from judges. They are losing patience with the Trump administration's behavior in court. Besides contempt, this one judge made a lot of news for fining a lawyer$500 a day. Right. What else can judges do to gain control and to gain some credible behavior in front of courts? I'd say two big things. Number one is this notion of contempt, which it's so remarkable that it even happened in the first place. Now, there are a few options for contempt. One is, as we saw here, holding the individual attorney responsible, personally making that individual pay$500 a day or whatever else the fine may be.

13:16You can also hold the agency in contempt, either the secretary or the head of the agency or whatever else. That is another option. And what's remarkable about it is that it simply does not happen. It is remarkably rare for government attorneys to be held in contempt, one. Number two is almost more philosophical on a bigger level, which is this idea that baked into the law is the notion, and it's called a term, and listen to this closely, the presumption of regularity in the law. which is that the law assumes that the government is acting in a manner that is honest and fair dealing and comporting with the law.

13:51And there's just an assumption that when a government attorney says something – and again, this is the law. This is not just what judges think – that when a government attorney stands up and speaks in court, that person is speaking truthfully and their words can be relied on. It has been noted multiple times in federal courts across the country recently that the government is now losing that notion with courts that they simply do not trust the Justice Department or the Department of Homeland Security when they come up and speak in court. That's a big deal because now they're starting to lose in a way that they would not before, and it's before because of their own behavior.

14:25Is that up to individual judges to say I'm not going to grant the presumption of irregularity in this case or any more for a month? Like, how does that work? Or is it blanket? Does some circuit do it? No, it would be court by court. I guess a circuit court, even the Supreme Court could say that the presumption of regularity no longer exists in American courts. But that would be a really remarkable step. And look, that is not going to happen. So individual judges. Individual judges do. But again, that is a big deal. Going back decades, if not longer, the idea that legally the government is entitled to a presumption that what they're saying is truthful has been the way America has worked.

15:01It simply is not the case anymore. Well, tell us a little bit more about the knock-on effects of individual attorneys representing the government being held in contempt, right? Because it's not just you representing the government. You have a license to protect as well. And, I mean, you work for the government, Elliot. What kinds of tensions are at play and how is that affecting the people who are being called before the courts to present the government's case? Right. I mean, well, we know the instance of a federal prosecutor in Minnesota who said, you know, this job sucks or something like that and stormed out.

15:32And I think it actually has one corrosive effect on morale among most attorneys in the government that people simply don't want to be there anymore beginning to lose their jobs. Number two, it's just getting harder for the government to do its job if its people are either A, leaving or B, being held financially responsible for things that happen in court. And so, one, the government is putting its own folks personally at risk, but also, two, their own mission is getting jeopardized by their own behavior because they can't successfully carry it out because the folks who are carrying it out are getting in trouble or simply don't want to be there.

16:07Absolutely. And you know what's interesting about what you said, Elliot, is there is almost like a clean, hard dividing line between those who feel that they will not violate their duty of candor to the court. That duty is so built in, that principle. And on the other side, those who want to help Trump's agenda are and often don't have the experience or the grounding to know you can't come in fast and loose with facts before a federal judge. The result has been really stunning in a couple of places, as you guys know, because you're close followers and I think our listeners here today are as well.

16:49it's so rare for grand juries to turn down a request to indict from a prosecutor even though it's a one-sided experience prosecutors come in no defense lawyer they say you need to charge this guy with x here are facts this department of justice is losing that incredible odds and the people who are making that presentation have a duty to believe that the evidence they're presenting the prosecutors, a duty to believe that they will be able to sustain a conviction with the facts they have on board. But grand juries full of people that aren't lawyers are saying baloney. You don't have it. So what does that say about the good faith of those prosecutors who are agreeing to propose indicting former FBI Director Jim Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James, sometimes CNN's former DN, Don Lemon.

17:46Sitting members of Congress. Six Democratic members of Congress. That statutory requirement is huge. And I'm so glad, Jen, you mentioned bar license because there are people inside the Department of Justice taking names of the individuals that they think need to be referred. Well, I want to make sure we touch on another part of the system that's under pressure right now. In 2025, President Trump dismissed at least 98 of 700 immigration judges on the bench. That's according to the National Association of Immigration Judges. California alone lost more than a quarter of its immigration judges last year.

18:25Dozens more have retired or resigned. Elliott, what's happening? This is very, very, very bad, Jen. And I say this as someone who, in my last sin at the Justice Department, helped hire and screen immigration judges. They are actually an arm of the Justice Department. They're not judges in the sense that we think of them. Let's just talk about some of the numbers about sort of the backlog of cases. Number one, at the end of 2025, there were just shy of three and a half million with an M pending immigration cases in court. And that number has only gotten higher. There were two and a half million pending asylum cases just sitting in court.

19:02It takes something like four years from the time someone is first summoned to come to immigration court typically to get their hearing. There is just an insurmountable backlog that can only be solved by more skilled immigration judges filling those roles. And increasingly, because of – for whatever reasons the administration is choosing to do so, they're getting rid of the people that are in those jobs. It is, again, counterproductive in that if they wish to be removing more people from the country, they are making the court system that can make that possible far less efficient. This is an enormous problem on a historic scale that stretches back to before even when I was there.

19:44But the difference is it's just getting much worse now because of the pace at which the Trump administration is putting people into the immigration system. Yeah, let's talk about the size of the input into that system that's strained that you're talking about, Elliot. The administration, Carol, repeatedly says they use this phrase, the worst of the worst. We're taking out the worst of the worst. They're running commercials during Olympic coverage showing a select group, small group of famous violent criminals who killed young girls in this country. But fewer than 14 percent of the nearly 400 ,000 people arrested by ICE in this campaign have any criminal record.

20:22That's according to internal DHS numbers. We've seen similar numbers from other reports as well. So how does the administration's – the size of the net here interact with what Elliott is talking about, which is an eviscerating of the core of immigration judges in the first place and the size of the – of just the number of people who are not the worst of the worst. that they're sending through. I mean, let's talk broadly and then let's speed down to what's really happening and has been happening on the ground in Minnesota. So more broadly to your question, Todd, I mean, every DHS source I talk to, everybody I know in ICE who is really disconcerted by what they're being demanded to do, points back to Stephen Miller's quota and points to DHS bonuses that have been offered to offices at DHS in exchange for getting higher numbers.

21:18So let me take you to a little bit of a timeline. In the summer of 2025, after Stephen Miller excoriated DHS officers, he said, you're going to meet this quota, gosh darn it, or else. He fired half of the field service officers who had the lowest performance in terms of generating deportation numbers and arrests. And so it doesn't matter what these people, what immigrants have done, what stage they are in asylum. It doesn't matter whether they actually are days away from becoming citizens and have no criminal record and maybe don't have a traffic record. It's the incentive system to arrest them and get them out of the country.

22:04Let's go to Minnesota. after the shooting of Renee Good and Alex Priddy, but particularly after the shooting of Alex Priddy, President Trump started to hear from his Republican senators, you got to stop this. You're shooting Americans in the street and we're hearing from our constituents and this is not good. You have got to stop or the midterms are going to be a bloodbath. And of course, I'm paraphrasing. but that was a turning point for Minnesota where the president actually said, okay, we're going to reduce the numbers. Noam's no longer in charge. Christy Noam's no longer in charge of that surge and brought in Tom Holman allegedly as the savior.

22:45But the people I talked to in Minnesota, the sources that are there, are still seeing children running from school bus when they hear protesters and legal observers and their whistles telling them ICE is in the neighborhood. ICE is coming. ICE is still now more often in planes clothes rather than paramilitary outfits knocking on people's door that they believe are immigrants because they're brown and trying to conduct these arrests. We'll have more from Minnesota tomorrow on the program. That's MS Now Senior Investigative Correspondent Carol Lenick and CNN Legal Analyst Elliot Williams. Carol, Elliot, thank you.

23:24Thanks. Thank you. After a quick break, we bring in two new voices to talk about the money behind the Trump administration's immigration crackdown and the private companies profiting from it.

23:39Let's get back into the conversation and hear from two new voices. Jose Olivares is an investigative journalist and audio producer reporting on immigration enforcement, U.S. operations in Latin America, and human rights. Jose, welcome back to the program. Thanks so much. Always great to be with you. And Lauren Brooke Eisen is with us. She's the senior director of the Brennan Center's Justice Program. It's great to have you. Thank you for having me. Jose, let's start with the Department of Homeland Security's budget,$45 billion for starters. DHS has been shut down for just over two weeks now due to a stalemate in Congress, especially in the Senate over reforms to ICE.

24:18We're going to talk more about that a little bit later. But ICE is now the highest funded U.S. law enforcement agency, I think, in history. What do we know about how that money is actually being used on the ground? That's right. So the One Big Beautiful Bill Act was such a significant windfall of cash for immigration and customs enforcement and for immigration enforcement operations just in general, right? The act allocated$170 billion to immigration enforcement, and$45 billion of those is for immigration detention services. So I think it's really significant because we saw this huge leap from the Biden administration, where the last fiscal year was only$3.9 billion for detention centers.

25:01And now we're seeing this huge jump to$45 billion. So even though this partial shutdown is ongoing, ICE continues to operate, Customs and Border Protection continues to operate just because of the sheer amount of money that they received. Now, a lot of this money is going to these private contractors that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is working with. Not only is a lot of the money going also to building up the agents and training agents and hiring new officers to join ICE, but so much of it is going to these private contractors that work with ICE. And these private contractors, they're not just the private prison companies that are detaining immigrants and running these detention centers, but they're also the health care contractors that work at these facilities, the airplane and air transport companies that deport immigrants to their countries of origin, and also the technology companies that allow the entire system to run and to also track down immigrants to arrest.