Former President Joe Biden’s ban on the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) from contracting with private detention companies to hold criminal migrants resulted in increased costs for American taxpayers, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report suggests.
Just days after taking office in January 2021, Biden reinstated an Obama era-policy to phase out the BOP contracts with a handful of privately-managed prisons that almost entirely hold foreign nationals convicted of federal crimes.
At the time, Biden billed the initiative as part of his “racial equity” agenda.
The decision, the GAO report states, led to a rise in prison costs for Americans, as private detention centers contracted by BOP to hold criminal migrants tend to be much less expensive than federal detention facilities.
“BOP’s incarceration of noncitizens cost 17 percent more in fiscal year 2023 ($1.1 billion) than in fiscal year 2021 ($935 million), though the number of noncitizens incarcerated remained relatively the same,” the report reads:
Adjusting for inflation and expressing the amounts in federal fiscal year 2025 dollars, BOP’s incarceration of noncitizens cost 5 percent more in fiscal year 2023 ($1.15 billion) than in fiscal year 2021 ($1.1 billion). [Emphasis added]
We observed a potential factor that could have contributed to the increase in costs, but we did not identify all potential factors or assess their relative effects. Specifically, we noted that this time period coincided with the end of BOP’s contracts with privately-operated criminal detention facilities, which were its lowest cost facility type. BOP used privately-operated facilities to incarcerate certain low-security individuals—including noncitizens—according to BOP documentation. [Emphasis added]
Executives with the National Immigration Center for Enforcement (NICE) said they warned from the start that the decision by Biden to ban BOP from contracting with private detention centers would spur an array of issues, including financial problems for the agency.
“Mark Morgan said all of this in July 2025. Warned that $ 250-per-day beds and side deals with states were for show, would burn money, and blow the best chance in decades to entrench the one thing immigration enforcement can’t run without: real detention facilities,” NICE executives wrote on X. “Nobody listened. GAO just put it in writing.”
The GAO report suggests that holding criminal migrants in a private detention center for a BOP facility is about 35 percent cheaper for taxpayers:
“Each of those years, incarcerating an individual in a privately-operated facility cost 22 percent to 35 percent less than incarcerating that individual in a BOP-operated low security facility,” the report continues:
In January 2021, the administration directed the Attorney General not to renew contracts with privately operated criminal detention facilities. In fiscal year 2023—the year BOP’s last privately operated facility contract ended — approximately half (48 percent) of BOP-incarcerated noncitizens were in BOP-operated low security facilities, a notable increase from the years prior to the executive order. [Emphasis added]
NICE President RJ Hauman told Breitbart News that the report is an opportunity for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to build out billions in detention space rather than focusing on what he calls “stunts” like tents in Florida’s Everglades and Guantanamo.
“Traditional custodial detention runs a median of $92 a day, and GAO found ICE never even weighed its experiments against it,” Hauman said. “Mass deportation doesn’t happen without permanent beds at scale, and that money runs out in 2029. DHS can still get this right, but not if it spends another year relearning what every career official already knew.”
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com.
