ICE selects untested firms to oversee new warehouse detention centers

For decades, two companies have been the government’s go-to partners for immigrant detention:
Geo Group and CoreCivic
run the facilities where the majority of people detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are held.


But as the Trump administration embarks on a $38 billion plan to convert industrial warehouses into a new breed of large-scale holding centers,
it is turning to a crop of relatively untested businesses to rapidly build and operate the facilities.

On Friday, the administration awarded a contract worth
at least $113.1 million to KVG LLC,
a defense contractor, to build and operate a detention center in a
Williamsport, Maryland warehouse,
according to federal spending website USASpending.gov.

The company has not been awarded any previous federal contracts for immigrant detention, according to government procurement records.

GardaWorld Federal Services,
a security contractor, was awarded at least $313.4 million to run the detention center planned at a Surprise, Arizona, warehouse.

The company employs guards at immigrant holding centers in Canada as well as at the “Alligator Alcatraz” facility in the Florida Everglades.

Prior to the Arizona award, it had not been directly contracted by ICE to oversee any detention centers, records show

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2026/03/09/ice-warehouse-detention-centers/