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There’s a phrase that keeps coming back once you’ve spent any serious time investigating America’s for-profit detention industry. Nick Valencia said it on air Monday night, and it landed the way plain truth always does — not as outrage bait, but as a diagnosis.
Cruelty is the point.
Nick Valencia is an Emmy Award-winning journalist who spent nearly 20 years at CNN — national correspondent, lead CDC and White House reporter during the pandemic, lead political correspondent in Georgia through 2020 and 2024. One of the first American journalists inside El Chapo’s escape tunnel at Almoloya de Juárez. He left CNN, went independent, and has been doing some of the most important investigative work on private immigration detention in the country.
I invited him onto The Wire Tap because I recognized someone who actually knows this beat. I was doing prison-for-profit reporting going back to 2006, 2007 — when a family member was picked up and taken to a private facility in the Houston area, and the first thing I learned was that you couldn’t even put money on an account for a $5 call without pre-loading $50 with a private company. That money, more often than not, evaporated. I built prisonforprofit.org trying to track it. I know what this industry looks like from the ground up.
What Nick has done is take that ground-level knowledge and apply it to what this industry has become in 2025 and 2026 — which is something qualitatively different from anything we’ve seen before.
Here’s what he had to say.
“Our Tax Dollars Are Going Into This System Whether We Know It or Not”
The baseline fact that should orient every American to this story:
“What everyone should be concerned about is that our tax dollars as Americans are going into this system, whether we know it or not. And people are double dipping — there are people that are detained, again, without charges, who are asking to voluntarily deport, and they’re not being able to go back home.”
This is not a theoretical corruption. The numbers are documented through advocacy groups and publicly available records.
“Between $27,000 and $35,000 per day, per bed, per person. And so we asked ourselves — and what really got me interested in this is — it’s not going to stop at undocumented Americans. People are here without papers contributing to our country and America. It’s going to go to the undesirable Americans next, you know, people who are speaking up and speaking out against the Trump administration.”
He paused before saying the next part.
“I don’t want to be dramatic or poetic, but the numbers — the beds need to stay full in order for these companies who invested money in it.”
A Hunger Strike, a Stroke, and What ICE Didn’t Tell a Family
Nick reported Monday morning on two concurrent stories. The first: a massive hunger strike at the Adelante/Atalanta ICE Processing Center — one owned by GEO Group.
The second: Justo Betancourt, recently released from the detention facility widely known as “Alligator Alcatraz,” who suffered a near-fatal stroke while in ICE custody.
“He actually suffered a near-fatal stroke while in ICE custody. He never spoke up because he didn’t want to concern his family even more. He was worried about, you know, what has been done to him already. What’s more concerning though is that ICE never told his family what happened.”
Betancourt is bipolar and schizophrenic. He was given the wrong medication dosage at the wrong time of day. He was released and is now back in the hospital.
“We heard it from Justo Betancourt who just got out of Alligator Alcatraz straight on our show and he said his estimates — and I need to look into this, but — if we’re talking about it, he estimates up to 60% of the people that are in custody in Alligator Alcatraz have some sort of mental health issue. He would know. He has mental health issues. He has poor mental health. He’s bipolar schizophrenic. He wasn’t receiving his medication when he was — he was being given the wrong dosage during the wrong cycle or wrong time of day. All of that could lead to some really dark thoughts, and he’s back in the hospital right now.”
From Obama to Trump: “All Gas, No Brakes”
Nick has been covering immigration for 20 years. He’s careful not to make this a simple partisan story, and he’s right not to.
“I’ve been covering immigration for 20 years going back to CNN and it was back in probably the Obama administration when this got expanded. As I used to call him — deporter in chief. Between 300,000 and 400,000 people every year, and it always went up by the numbers, every year were detained and deported under the Obama administration.”
“What our documentary and our investigative report really lays out very clearly is that this isn’t a left versus right thing. This expanded and started under a different name in the 80s, really got going under President Obama as he expanded, and it’s been all gas, no brakes under President Trump.”
During COVID, Alabama Governor Ivey attempted to use COVID relief funds to open a new private prison. The public pushed back hard enough that she stopped. That instinct — that there’s a threshold somewhere — doesn’t seem to be operating the same way now.
“These private prisons, they brag openly now on their earnings calls that this is an unprecedented growth sector. I’m getting goosebumps talking about it. In their quarter three earnings calls, they talked about how this is an unprecedented growth opportunity. This is a call from Geo Group. Their CEO, Damon Henninger. CoreCivic has a CEO named George Zoli. Those guys are making millions upon millions of dollars, and they have an intersection with President Trump. The former attorney general was a lobbyist for CoreCivic as recent as 2019.”
The corruption isn’t just at the federal level.
“There’s a lot of through lines between the donations that some of these political representatives that you and I vote for unknowingly taking money. It’s not just a Republican thing. Recently in the gubernatorial debate in Kansas, a primary for the Democratic primary, one of the leading contenders there was, you know, again, raked through the coals because he was taking money from a private prison in CoreCivic there. So this has, you know, sort of infused itself into our political machine here in the U.S.”
“Concentration Camps”: When the Language Finally Fits
Nick was honest about his own evolution on this.
“These have been called concentration camps and Chris I think initially when I got into independent reporting I still had this sort of traditional media glasses on and I would hear that and I would pause and I would say you know no no no no there’s only one kind of concentration camp — that’s Nazi Germany.”
Then he went inside Camp East Montana.
“I went into Camp East Montana — again getting goosebumps — the way it is constructed to be void of emotion, these sort of blank white tents, rocks as landscaping, you know, there’s no plants, there’s no pictures on the wall. The psychological impact is meant to break people — literally break people — because under President Trump, these private prisons, cruelty is the point.”
The Expansion: Bounty Hunters, License Plates, Palantir
What Nick has documented goes well beyond the detention centers themselves.
“It’s not just private prisons. GEO Group just expanded into bounty hunters — a bounty hunter program where they hired a third party, according not just to The Intercept’s reporting but 404 media as well — they hired third party bounty hunters to go after unaccompanied child minors who are still lost in the system. And so the expansion of this should be really concerning.”
The surveillance infrastructure is following the money.
“We’re seeing a lot of these ALRP — these automated license plate reading cameras — and those are being put up in the name of law enforcement around private businesses like Walmart, major businesses, and they act as a way to gather data that’s then sold to agencies like ICE or the Border Patrol or whoever. What should concern us is the type of technology that’s being used in the name of immigration with a very big bag of money behind it — $75 billion. Palantir money.”
The Masuma Khan Act: One Blueprint for Fighting Back
Not everything is grim. Nick has been amplifying the case of Masuma Khan, detained for five weeks at the California City Detention Center — owned by CoreCivic, unlawfully open. She experienced psychological impacts her family describes as manic episodes, sleep disruption, and unknown medical consequences.
California State Senator Perez took her story and built legislation.
“Senate Bill 995. It’s the Masuma Khan Act. Masuma Khan, another person who was a character in our documentary, held in the California City Detention Center, owned by CoreCivic, unlawfully open. She was held there for five weeks. And she now — the psychological impacts that she’s had, she talks according to her family a little bit more manically, she has trouble sleeping, she has had some sort of unknown medical impacts. We really don’t know the ramifications that people are going to have.”
The bill just passed the Appropriations Committee.
“It basically puts them in the same category as a restaurant, for instance, in California, where they are subject to surprise visits and investigations or inspections. They have ratings put on when those inspections happen. And it just passed a major hurdle after being stuck for a little while. So, you know, look, we’ll take this win. We’ve been amplifying that message, the story of Masuma Khan and Ria Khan. And this very well could be a blueprint for what the rest of the nation does to the private prisons in their backyard.”
On Leaving CNN and What Independence Actually Means
I asked Nick why he left. He’d been at CNN nearly 20 years. He didn’t leave because it stopped paying. He left because something had shifted.
“I never wanted to work anywhere else other than CNN. And I was there long enough to start to see the change in the landscape. And we say that the media landscape is shifting, but it has shifted. It shifted like probably 20 years ago with the rise of YouTube.”
On what independence actually feels like:
“I was working for bosses and I thought I was working for the people, but really truly now I feel like I’m working for the people, and that’s a huge, huge difference, especially when you’re looking at journalism like an act of service, which we all should.”
“There are a lot of people out there who say they’re journalists or who are independent journalists, and they’re actually paid by somebody. No one’s paying me. That’s the beauty of this. I truly see this as an act of service. I’m not getting some corporate sponsor or special interest or anything like that.”
On what’s changed about his audience:
“I’ve met some of you guys out for dinner. I’ve had phone calls with you guys. I’ve visited you in your hometowns. This is a one-to-one connection and you’re all part of this community.”
On the ideological frame he works from now:
“I identify more as a progressive and a liberal, I lean left, but also I believe in God and Jesus Christ and I have a family, nuclear family, and so I have started to see this more as a top versus bottom society and where that gap and that middle class is dying in our country in the United States. I’ve really taken the perspective that I want my audience to be a working class audience — some of them may vote for Trump, some of them may be MAGA, some of them may be part of the LGBTQ community and they’re socialist progressives — and that smattering is the prevailing wisdom that I’m trying to get at.”
The Danger to Journalists — and the Decision to Go Harder
I closed by flipping the conversation. I’m in a war zone. I’m not under threat from my government. Nick is in Georgia, and he is.
“I mean, I feel free. I mean, I’m — there was fear, but what we do now — and I really mean this — is that I’m out there and I say, hey, look, my wife knows the risks that I’m taking. I share my location with her and my best friend. And we’re really doing this for the right reasons. We’re a voice of the people here. We’re trying to be, anyway.”
On the press freedom crisis in America:
“You can judge how open and free a country is based on how open and free the press is. And the fact of the matter is, our institutions have been corrupted. When I was saying top versus bottom, these media company owners are part of that, which is why you get the self-censorship that you do. It’s not full-blown censorship ever. It’s always people saying — I know the difference between no one telling you not to say it and you understanding: don’t say it.”
“That’s fascism too, right? It’s me being on the phone with Don Lemon hours before he’s — and the next day waking up and being on the phone and having a huddled conversation with my wife and giving her the numbers to the attorneys that she needs to call when the feds come knocking on my door. For what? I didn’t do anything wrong. But yet I have people all over my social media and in real life calling me to say that I should come to my door — as a third generation Mexican-American, where the border crossed us.”
He took his five-year-old son to vote early in Georgia.
“I gave him a little civics lesson about how there were laws in this country that people didn’t like and thought that were bad. And they used their voice. There were people like me with skin color my color and darker who couldn’t vote in this country like a normal person. And so this is my argument — pushback to people who try to claim morality is legality. And it’s not. What we’re seeing right now in America is not normal, and we should not be normalized to it. We shouldn’t be normalized to National Guard on the streets of DC and other places, or these immigration agents out there. And we also, Chris, shouldn’t be normalized to the attack on the free press.”
A Next Report Coming
Before signing off, Nick flagged what’s coming next from his independent shop.
“If you want to see part two — our next report on the real corruption — that’s on YouTube. That’s where you saw ‘Private Prisons Get Rich Off ICE.’ We have another report coming up very soon on how private equity has infused itself into the healthcare industry in the United States.”
Follow Nick Valencia’s independent journalism and subscribe at nickvalencianews.com. If you’re a Wire Tap subscriber and found this conversation valuable, please share it. The work Nick is doing — primary source, ground-level, no corporate filter — is exactly the kind of journalism that needs audience infrastructure right now.
We’ll have Nick back. There’s a lot more chaos coming, and people doing this kind of work on the ground need to be talking to each other.
— Chris Sampson, Kyiv
