What GDP Won’t Tell You About Prisons, Profits, and the $45 Billion ICE Expansion
April 09, 2025
Opinion: $45 Billion for Detention Isn’t Immigration Reform. It’s a Gift to the Prison Industrial Complex.
Back in 2006, when I enrolled in Seattle University’s Leadership-Executive MBA program, I thought economics would be one of the most boring classes.
GDP? Resource allocation?
Snoozefest.
But thanks to a few excellent professors and eye-opening classroom discussions, I started sitting up in my chair.
What Is GDP, Anyway?
GDP stands for Gross Domestic Product, and it’s basically how the U.S. keeps score of its economy. Imagine adding up the value of everything we buy, sell, build, and spend money on in a year—cars, surgeries, weapons, rent, chicken nuggets, prison construction.
That big number? That’s GDP.
If the number goes up, politicians say the economy is “healthy.”
But here’s the problem: GDP doesn’t care what we’re building or why.
A cancer diagnosis? Boosts GDP.
A hurricane? Boosts GDP.
A new prison? Yep, that too.
It’s a system that counts activity—but not impact.
It measures motion—not meaning.
Once I realized that GDP is the primary way we measure success in our economy, I started looking at the nuts and bolts of what we’re calling “success.”
And I realized … so many things that actually reveal how horribly we’re doing as a country are celebrated—simply because they boost our GDP.
That includes profits from prisons, arms deals, and medical treatment —hospital stays, pharmaceuticals, surgeries.
In this system, health and happiness aren’t profitable.
You might already be familiar with the data I’m about to share.
But like me back then, maybe you’ve never looked at it through the lens of GDP.
Once I saw how GDP rewarded harm, I couldn’t unsee it. I started looking at our biggest “success stories” differently—especially the industries profiting most from pain.
So let’s look at a few of the major GDP-boosting industries in the U.S.—and what they actually cost us when we look at it through the lens of ALL the ways we should be looking at and measuring the well-being of our country.
Arms Sales: War as Growth
The U.S. is the largest arms exporter in the world, accounting for 43% of global weapons exports from 2020–2024.
(Source: Geopolitical Economy Report, March 2025)
In fiscal year 2024 alone, U.S. arms transfers and defense trade totaled $117.9 billion, with $96.9 billion of that coming from foreign military sales to U.S. allies and partners.
(Source: U.S. State Department)
These transactions are counted as “economic activity” and contribute to GDP —but they also deepen global militarization, fuel conflicts, and entrench geopolitical instability.
The economy grows, but at the expense of peace.
Healthcare: Sickness as a Business Model
In 2023, the U.S. spent $4.9 trillion on healthcare, representing 17.6% of national GDP.
(Source: Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services)
And yet, the U.S. continues to rank poorly in life expectancy, chronic disease rates, and maternal mortality compared to other wealthy nations.
Why? Because the system rewards treatment, not prevention. The more people get sick, the more the economy “grows.” Pharmaceutical sales, hospital stays, and surgeries all count toward GDP.
But healthy communities? Preventive care? Supportive environments? Those don’t move the economic needle.
The True Cost of the U.S. Prison Industrial Complex
Direct Government Spending on Corrections:
The U.S. spends $182 billion per year on the criminal legal system, including:
- Prisons and jails: $80.7B
- Police: $63.2B
- Judicial/legal costs: $29B
- Supervision (probation/parole): $8.1B
(Source: Prison Policy Initiative, 2017)
The Broader Economic Burden:
When you factor in lost wages, reduced economic mobility, family costs, and ripple effects, the total societal cost balloons to over $1 trillion per year—nearly 6% of U.S. GDP.
(Source: Institute for Justice Research and Development (IJRD), 2016)
This includes:
- Lost earnings from incarceration and criminal records
- Decreased lifetime earnings for children of incarcerated parents
- Health impacts and increased public health costs
- Reduced tax revenue
- Increased reliance on public assistance
Who Profits?
Private prison corporations like GEO Group and CoreCivic make billions.
GEO Group made $2.3 billion in 2022. CoreCivic brought in $1.8 billion.
About 43% of GEO’s revenue in some years comes directly from ICE detention contracts.
(Source: GEO Group 10-K filings via SEC, Brennan Center)
Incarceration by the Numbers:
The U.S. has 2 million people locked up at any given time —the highest incarceration rate in the world.
Over 5 million more are under community supervision (probation/parole).
Black Americans are incarcerated at nearly 5 times the rate of white Americans.
(Source: The Sentencing Project)
The prison industrial complex isn’t just morally bankrupt—it’s economically absurd.
It drains public funds, harms families, depresses entire communities, and then gets celebrated as “growth” because it generates jobs and government contracts.
But this isn’t safety. It’s a cycle of punishment sold as policy.
How “Immigration Enforcement” Became Incarceration Infrastructure
So when I read that last week the Trump administration released a request for up to $45 billion in contracts to expand immigrant detention facilities, I was outraged.
On the surface, it’s framed as a crackdown on undocumented immigration.
But let’s be honest: this isn’t just about enforcement.
It’s about padding the pockets of private prison companies and deepening the roots of the prison industrial complex—with immigrant bodies as the fuel.
And let’s get another thing straight: detention is not deportation.
You don’t need $45 billion to remove people from the country.
You need functioning legal systems, international agreements, and due process. What this level of spending builds instead is a vast network of holding cells, transportation systems, security guards, surveillance tech, and medical contractors.
This is not immigration reform—it’s incarceration infrastructure.
Remember Orange Is the New Black?
Did you watch Orange Is the New Black?
That Netflix show wasn’t just entertainment—it was a dramatized window into the U.S. prison industrial complex. It showed us how people—especially women of color—get caught in cycles of punishment, bureaucracy, and exploitation, all while corporations turn incarceration into a business model.
Was anyone else outraged when the character Blanca Flores was taken by ICE at the end of Season 6? After serving her sentence at Litchfield, she expected to be released. Instead, she was snatched and sent to a privately run ICE detention facility.
The show didn’t exaggerate.
It reflected a real system, where immigrants who’ve served their time are funneled directly into private detention centers—because someone profits when they do.
In real life, GEO Group and CoreCivic are already profiting heavily from ICE contracts. These companies spend millions lobbying for policies that keep detention numbers high.
And while children are separated from families, asylum seekers are caged, and court backlogs grow, shareholders cash in.
But here’s the deeper sickness: we count this cruelty as economic growth.
The United States measures its success through Gross Domestic Product (GDP)—a number that doesn’t distinguish between life-affirming and life-destroying activity. When a private prison builds a new facility, hires guards, and contracts out meals and security, that gets counted as a boost to GDP.
In fact, a comprehensive study by the Institute for Justice Research and Development estimated the total societal cost of incarceration at over $1 trillion annually—nearly 6% of U.S. GDP. That’s a number that far exceeds what we actually spend on corrections.
This is the trap of “late capitalism,” a term used to describe the strange, often heartbreaking version of capitalism we’re living in now—where profit is prioritized over people, and systems are so distorted that things like illness, incarceration, and climate disasters are seen as “good for the economy.”
It’s not just about money. It’s about what we value, what we measure, and who we leave behind.
In late capitalism, forest fires boost GDP. So do oil spills, cancer diagnoses, and prison construction.
But caregiving? Mutual aid? Healing work?
Not counted. Not profitable.
This is the trap: we’ve built an economic system that confuses destruction with success.
And the more we cling to it, the more harm we normalize.
The ICE proposal isn’t just a policy decision.
It’s a long-term investment in systemic incarceration.
It normalizes the idea that warehousing people is a solution.
It entrenches a surveillance state.
It erodes civil liberties—not just for immigrants, but for all of us.
If we’re serious about immigration reform, we need to dismantle the systems that conflate human dignity with disposability.
We need to stop measuring “success” in profit margins drawn from pain.
And we need to reject any budget that treats caged people as economic activity.
This isn’t border security. It’s bondage rebranded.
Get involved:
🧮 1. Push Back on the GDP Narrative
GDP is entrenched, but it’s not sacred—and economists, activists, and everyday people are challenging it.
What you can do:
- Talk about it publicly: Use your voice, platforms, and networks to challenge the myth that GDP = health. Share your blog post. Start conversations.
- Support alternatives like:
- Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI)
- Doughnut Economics (Kate Raworth’s model)
- Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEAll)
These movements are actively pushing governments to adopt more holistic economic indicators.
- Pressure local/state officials to pilot alternative metrics (e.g., Maryland has used GPI).
- Vote with your dollars: Support businesses and orgs rooted in community care, not extraction.
🧱 2. Oppose the $45 Billion ICE Detention Expansion
Even before funding is approved, there are real ways to resist.
What you can do:
- Contact your reps: Call or write your senators and representatives. Tell them to oppose any budget that funds ICE detention expansion or private prison contracts. Personal, passionate messages matter.
- Support immigrant rights orgs already fighting back, such as:
- Spread awareness: Most people don’t know about this $45B proposal. Share this blog post or write your own to help educate and mobilize.
- Disrupt the profit pipeline: Push for divestment from CoreCivic, GEO Group, and any financial institutions funding them.
Organize locally: City and county governments often contract with ICE and private prisons. Organizing at the local level can cancel or prevent those deals.
Conclusion: The story we tell about growth is killing us.
But together we can write a new one—rooted in care, dignity, and the radical idea that human lives are not expendable.