A federal prison in Lake County, may become a detention facility for Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The North Lake Correctional Facility in Baldwin is owned by the private prison company GEO Group. Documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union show the company proposed the site to ICE last year.
The Baldwin prison was made vacant in 2022, after an executive order from President Joe Biden ended federal contracts with for-profit private prisons. ICE was not included in President Biden’s executive order.
The American Civil Liberties union obtained the documents, which include the North Lake Facility in an email titled “Multi-State Detention Facility Support Chicago, IL Area of Responsibility,” from June 23, 2024.
Eunice Cho, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU, says immigration detention in America relies on private prisons. “Nine out of 10 people in immigration detention are held in facilities that are owned or operated by private prison corporations,” she said.
“That’s due in part to federal statute which requires ICE to look at existing facilities before building their own for immigration detention purposes,” Cho added. “Private prison companies have often put themselves out there as facilities that are currently operating or existing.”
The North Lake facility has been the subject of immigration discussion in the past. In 2022, Republican Congressmen Bill Huizenga and John Moolenaar sent a letter to ICE’s Acting Director Tae Johnson calling on the agency to consider converting the prison.
“It is vitally important for the Midwest region to have the capacity and facilities to keep our communities safe and dangerous criminals off the street. The North Lake Correctional Facility could be extremely useful to ICE to accomplish these goals,” the letter wrote.
In 2022, the center was the site of a prisoner hunger strike, over poor conditions during the pandemic, dozens of inmates caught the COVID-19 virus and one died. In 2024, a contracted BOP Case Manager was sentenced to 2 years in prison for making false statements about engaging in sexual acts to investigators.
“This is not unique to North Lake, this is endemic,” said Andrew Free, an immigration lawyer and researcher. “Privately contracted ICE detention facilities are particularly shy about having criminal enforcement that is not within the DHS (Department of Homeland Security) space,” he said.
In a statement, a spokesperson for ICE said, “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s enhanced enforcement operations and routine daily operations have resulted in a significant number of arrests of criminal aliens that require greater detention capacity.”
“We cannot confirm individual pre-decisional conversations, we can confirm that ICE is exploring all options to meet its current and future detention requirements,” the statement continued.
GEO Group did not respond to a request for comment.
