Private Immigration Detention Centers and Their Impact in Nevada

Located approximately one hour from Las Vegas, the Nevada Southern Detention Center is a privately operated detention facility in Pahrump, among many similar privately owned centers nationally. Across the United States, the majority of immigration detainees are not in government-run facilities but in privately operated centers. This longstanding system has been at the center of conversations about immigration enforcement, civil rights, and government accountability.

During federal immigration enforcement, the main focus is typically on compliance and legal authority. However, what is often overlooked are the privately-operated detention centers that facilitate enforcement and the abuses being reported from them.

What is the System Surrounding These Centers?

Immigration detention centers, ICE holds non-citizens awaiting immigration court hearings or deportation processes. Although this is a civil procedure rather than a criminal sentence, Congress authorizes agencies such as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to detain individuals to ensure their appearance in court.

To oversee this population, the federal government contracts with private for-profit companies, such as CoreCivic and GEO Group, to run detention centers. After Donald Trump won the 2024 election, private prison companies like GEO Group and CoreCivic experienced increased investor confidence due to anticipated expansions in immigration enforcement. This resulted in higher profits, demonstrating how strict and focused policies have directly benefited companies that operate private detention centers. In 2025, approximately 90% of individuals in ICE custody are housed in facilities operated by these private firms.

Many of these facilities were initially constructed as prisons or local jails and later repurposed and contracted for immigration detention centers. When enforcement priorities shift, ICE and its contractors can efficiently expand existing detention facilities rather than constructing new federal sites.

CoreCivic manages the Nevada Southern Detention Center (NSDC) in Pahrump through a contract with ICE. These agreements enable ICE to detain individuals for immigration violations or pending hearings. In 2025, CoreCivic agreed to increase the facility’s capacity for ICE detainees.

With expanding possibilities, CoreCivic offers employment opportunities in rural areas like Pahrump. This includes hiring staff to operate these centers, including security officers, administrative personnel, healthcare aides, and facility support staff. Although they argue these facilities contribute to economic growth in the community, immigration enforcement negatively affects the Las Vegas workforce, families, and communities. 

Our Las Vegas Immigrant Community

Nevada is home to an empowering immigrant community; in the Las Vegas Metro area alone, there are over 500,000 immigrant residents. In our community, 22% of residents are foreign-born, and 14.8% of Las Vegas U.S.-born residents are living with at least one immigrant parent. 

Immigrants in Las Vegas represent 31.5% of our entrepreneurs; 20.4% of immigrants fill the needed jobs in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM); and 37.4% are foreign-born nurses supporting Nevada patients. Many work on the Strip in hospitality jobs at the casinos, feed our communities, work in construction, or provide caregiver/domestic work to Nevada families, which is all very labor-intensive and often underpaid. And altogether our immigrant community contributes $4.8B in taxes and $15.9B in spending power, according to a 2023 American Immigration Council study. 

Beyond our workforce, detention centers and enforcement pushes reshape local families’ entire lives. When an individual is detained, the household income drops, consumer spending declines, housing stability can be jeopardized, and families are broken apart. This is before considering the insurmountable human rights abuses and constitutional violations happening to those detained within these facilities.

The Human Cost of these Detention Centers

It’s often easy to forget these are parents, grandparents, children, and so on, when they disappear behind numbers like tax revenue, spending power, and detention center populations. When the media focuses only on the numbers, the human factor is ignored, and abuses run rampant.

Communities across Nevada and the nation have raised concerns about private-contracted detention facilities, particularly with their transparency and oversight. Issues with per-detainee payments and capacity management underscore the need for greater public scrutiny, especially when facilities exceed contracted capacity for extended periods. 

An analysis by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) of federal contracts indicates that the Pahrump facility is contracted to house only 250 ICE detainees daily. However, throughout most of 2025, it often exceeded this limit. At the facility’s peak in November, it housed 462 ICE inmates, surpassing its contractual capacity by 212, making it one of the most overcrowded ICE detention centers nationwide. Late 2025 data from ICE revealed that detainee numbers in Southern Nevada increased by over 30% compared to earlier in the year. The Nevada Southern Detention Center held 462 detainees, while the smaller, government-operated Henderson Detention Center held 93, for a total of 554 daily. 

Although federal agencies claim to review contracts and conduct compliance checks, little transparency exists regarding how enforcement decisions affect detention numbers.

Limited Oversight Raises Civil Rights Concerns

In early August 2025, Representative Horsford was denied entry to the Pahrump facility because his appointment was improperly authorized and thus considered a “threat.” It was only three weeks later that he was finally granted access.

During Horsford’s visit to the facility, he interviewed nine detainees, who told legislators that access to legal representation was limited and that some had been moved across state lines without clear notice or understanding of their destination. 

Civil rights groups, such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), point out that private prison companies are often not subject to the same transparency requirements as government-operated facilities. 

Since immigration detention is a civil process rather than a form of criminal punishment, detainees are legally entitled to humane treatment and legal representation. This limited oversight and outsourcing of detention centers to private companies severely hinders efforts to protect these rights.

And with reports of sexual abuse (including against children), illness, overcrowding, rotten food, people going missing, and other inhumane conditions and unconstitutional treatment, these facilities should be shut down and investigated.

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Know Your Rights

Encounters with immigration enforcement are quite concerning for both immigrants and U.S. citizens alike. While ICE agents operate in Las Vegas, even when people are stopped or detained, they still maintain important constitutional protections that ICE is not supposed to infringe upon.

According to the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC), families need to have a safety plan. Being aware of your rights is crucial; however, maintaining composure during encounters is equally important. 

Individuals have the legal right to remain silent to avoid self-incrimination. It is important to understand that ICE warrants are not automatically validated by judicial approval; instead, they are simply forms signed by ICE officers that do not grant them the authority to enter your home without permission. To lawfully enter your residence, law enforcement officers must present a warrant issued and signed by a judge. Furthermore, individuals detained by immigration authorities have the right to seek legal counsel and consult with an attorney to protect their rights throughout the process.

In every community, fears of identification errors and concerns about limited access to legal help right away upon detention. Reports from across the country have shown that U.S. citizens and lawful residents are sometimes mistakenly detained by ICE. 

Protecting civil rights during enforcement processes is essential for building and maintaining trust between immigrant communities and local institutions. In Las Vegas, where immigrant workers significantly contribute, respecting constitutional protections is crucial in the ongoing debate over recent enforcement.

#GetinMotion to Protect Our Immigrant Neighbors

ACLU of NV

These are scary and uncertain times in our country, but there are many ways to get involved to help resist ICE and protect our communities. One way is by supporting the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, the state’s leading organization committed to defending the civil rights and personal freedoms of everyone. The ACLU of Nevada empowers community members to translate their knowledge into meaningful action. Through education, advocacy, and active local engagement, residents in Las Vegas can play a vital role in safeguarding civil rights, supporting underserved communities, and advocating for fair, transparent, and accountable law enforcement practices.

The FIREwall for Freedom campaign by the ACLU of Nevada is a statewide effort to protect civil rights by empowering Nevada communities to serve as a wall against unconstitutional federal policies. Through legal action, policy advocacy, and community education, it aims to defend free speech, immigrants’ rights, voting access, and equal protection, ensuring that change begins at the local level.

Local Grassroots Organizations

Additionally, we can all help protect our neighbors and communities by joining local grassroots groups doing mutual aid work, like bringing groceries to families afraid to leave the house in fear of ICE, alerting people when ICE is present, recording ICE, and otherwise working to protect the community and help immigrant families who are in danger of ICE detention or deportation. Check out groups like Fifth Sun Project, Mojada Inc., UNLV Immigration Clinic, the NV Immigrant Coalition, and Arriba Las Vegas to take more direct, local action. FSP also has a ‘Fighting for Immigrants’ Rights Toolkit’ available to the public to use to get involved!

Participate in Local Politics

And as always, keep contacting your representatives at all levels, locally and nationally.

With the upcoming primaries and midterm elections, it’s also important to find out who is running for office in your community and fighting for our immigrant neighbors, and support those candidates in this election.

There is a role for everyone to play in resisting what we’re seeing in our country and our community. And we all have a responsibility to speak up and take action, however we can and are individually capable of.

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