TENNESSEE

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - CoreCivic, the Brentwood-based private prison and detention company, reported second-quarter 2026 revenue of $684.9 million on August 5, up 27.3 percent from $538.2 million in the same quarter of 2025, growth the company attributes largely to its federal detention business. Federal customers, primarily U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Marshals Service, generated about 53 percent of total revenue and increased their spending with the company by $78.2 million year over year, according to the company's earnings release.

The same release discloses a Tennessee fact with West Tennessee consequences: the company activated its 600-bed West Tennessee Detention Facility during the period. The facility, in Mason, houses immigrant detainees, Tennessee Lookout reported on August 10. Mason sits in Tipton County, roughly an hour's drive from Memphis.

Since July, CoreCivic has also sold four facilities outright to the Department of Homeland Security for $2.2 billion in gross proceeds, about $307,000 per bed: the California City Detention Facility and Otay Mesa Detention Center on July 2, and the Prairie Correctional Facility and Midwest Regional Reception Center on August 4. The company expects to net about $1.6 billion after taxes and costs.

Tennessee Lookout, analyzing federal data from USAspending.gov, reported that Tennessee companies hold about $1.7 billion in contracts with federal immigration agencies in the fiscal year running to October 1, against $255 million in 2024. Lookout also reported the company's immigrant detainee population has grown nearly 18 percent since April.

"The solutions we provide to our federal customers continue to be a significant component of our business," President and Chief Executive Officer Patrick Swindle said in the company's earnings materials.

Critics see the same numbers differently. "Trump's mass detention and deportation machine is driving record profits into billionaire pockets," Lisa Sherman Luna, executive director of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, told Tennessee Lookout.

Congress has committed $75 billion in new ICE funding and $64 billion for Customs and Border Protection over four years, the spending that flows through contracts like these.

Why It Matters for Memphis

The 901 Report has documented, in its August 5 and August 6 reporting, an advocacy group's count of 51 ICE flights out of a Memphis-area airport since March, flights that leave from private terminals on public land. The West Tennessee Detention Facility in Mason is the nearest large ICE detention site to Memphis, and its activation this quarter builds out the local end of that same detention pipeline. When federal detention spending grows 27 percent through a Tennessee company, part of that public money is being spent an hour from the city, at a facility whose population, per-diem rates, and inspection records are all questions a reader here can ask of a federal contractor operating in West Tennessee.

The Oversight Question

A 600-bed federal detention facility came online an hour from Memphis inside a quarter of record growth, and no local body votes on it, inspects it, or receives reports on it. Who in West Tennessee sees inside the fence: what the facility holds, what the federal government pays per bed, and what its inspection record says?

Your city. Your money. Your receipts.