{
  "id": 3969623,
  "title": "Immigration enforcement is supplying a long-standing economic market for prisoners",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/28/immigration-enforcement-is-supplying-a-long-standing-economic-market",
  "topic": "finance",
  "section": "Finance & Markets",
  "published": "2026-08-28T12:16:42.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "The Conversation",
    "slug": "the-conversation",
    "url": "https://theconversation.com/immigration-enforcement-is-supplying-a-long-standing-economic-market-for-prisoners-286531"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "West Virginia has a history of using federal prisoners to generate state revenue. In 2026, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and local authorities detained around 600 immigrants in the state. Many of these individuals were held in the already overcrowded jail system, which had become part of a national network of immigrant detention centers. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency pays a daily rate to facilities to house detainees, often using rural communities that have faced budget cuts to their social services.\n\nHistorically, West Virginia has been one of the few states that received federal prisoners to help expand its prison system. From 1876 to around 1908, federal and District of Columbia prisoners sent to the state drove an expansion of West Virginia's prisons, with the state's prison population growing from around 160 in 1876 to over 1,200 in 1908. During this period, the state earned revenue from housing each federal prisoner, with reports from the penitentiary's wardens and supervisory board showing that by 1908, revenue from the federal government was over $77,000 for a two-year period.\n\nWhile the national incarceration rate has been decreasing since 2010, it varies by location and institution, with rural areas and conservative-leaning states experiencing significant growth. Immigrant detention has filled prison and jail cells in places where there were no new admissions, accounting for most of the growth in mass incarceration since the last report. Indiana, for example, rents beds to ICE for $291 per detainee per day, while a closed prison in Baldwin, Michigan, has reopened as an ICE facility, creating new jobs in the area. ICE pays hundreds of facilities daily rates to hold detainees, similar to practices that occurred in the early 20th century before federal prisons were established in other locations.",
  "summary": "Rural places have long built and expanded prisons to tap federal funds during hard times.",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}