Up North Progressive

For-profit “punk prison” North Lake Correctional Facility, owned by GEO Group, announced today that they have a shiny new federal prison contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, aka ICE.

The prison corporation that maxed out contributions to the Trump campaign by February 2024 got its payoff. The 1,800-bed facility just north of Baldwin, in Lake County, will begin the next chapter of a long series of unsuccessful activations that have yet to last more than a few years.

The deal with ICE is expected to be final in a matter of months. The promise is a multi-year contract generating a projected annual revenue of over $70 million in the first year alone. The list of services the prison will provide includes use of the facility, security, maintenance, food service (mmm, tasteless undercooked rice and beans), recreation facilities, medical care, and legal services.

Executive Chairman of GEO Group, George Zoley, had this to say about taking North Lake out of mothballs for the fifth time:

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. 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.

If you didn’t know, “public-private partnership” is corporate speak for “the government is going to give us your tax dollars to run this prison so we can profit from it, but not share any of it with you, the taxpayers.”

GEO Group may be optimistic, but the folks living in Lake County have a love-hate relationship with North Lake Correctional Facility. With nearly 2,000 beds to fill, the promise of hiring local people has yet to happen. The salaried jobs will be filled internally by current GEO Group employees. The jobs left over will be the lowest paid, and GEO Group will struggle to hire enough people. Very few residents of Lake County or surrounding counties will work at the prison.

There won’t be much local fanfare with the fifth activation of the punk prison, especially when GEO Group enjoys annual revenues of $2.5 billion while begging the Michigan Tax Tribunal to lower the assessed value of its property. Let’s not start with where all the GEO Group transplants will live. This activation will be no different than the last four—a complete failure.