As President Donald Trump ramps up immigration enforcement efforts and arrests multiply statewide, Nevada's main immigration detention center has become one of the most over-capacity immigration facilities in the nation.

As of April 2025, the Nevada Southern Detention Center, located in Pahrump, exceeded its contractual capacity with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) by more than 40 people per day, according to data obtained by Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). The facility — which houses a mix of detainees from ICE, the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the U.S. Marshals and can hold up to 1,064 people overall — is only contracted to hold a maximum of 250 ICE detainees per day. 

At its peak this fiscal year, the center had exceeded its ICE capacity by more than 200 at 462, making it among the 10 most-overcrowded immigration facilities out of the nation's 180 ICE detention centers, according to TRAC. 

Contractual capacity measures the number of detainees a private prison agrees to hold — so it doesn’t necessarily mean an entire building is physically crowded. ICE also doesn’t release capacity figures in real time, so TRACs data lags behind current conditions. And TRAC’s latest measure showed that across all facilities nationwide, ICE is only using about 76 percent of its contractual capacity. 

But the situation in Nevada could be part of the rationale for creating more detention facilities in the state.

The findings were released a few weeks before The Washington Post revealed that ICE was eyeing creating a new facility in Nevada, called a “soft-side” facility, which is a makeshift structure composed of tents. Such a facility would double detention capacity in Nevada, adding space for an additional 450 people, per documents obtained by The Washington Post that The Nevada Independent has not been able to independently verify.

Arrests, detention spending on the rise

Officials from CoreCivic, the private company that oversees the Nevada Southern Detention Center, have said that ballooning immigration arrests have increased demand for detention space. They said they expect demand to increase even more with the passage of Trump’s budget bill, which pumps more than $45 billion into expanding detention capacity nationwide and $29.9 billion towards the agencies’ enforcement operations through 2029.

Already in the first six months of Trump’s term, immigration arrests in Nevada have jumped nearly 300 percent compared with the same time period in 2024. Seventy percent of those people had not committed a violent or sex crime.

“The passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill has changed dramatically the activity of ICE and securing bed capacity,” Damon T. Hininger, the CEO of CoreCivic, said during an Aug. 11 earnings call. “This increase in law enforcement personnel will obviously raise the level of individuals arrested and the requirement for detention capacity.” 

CoreCivic already entered a new contract in February to increase capacity at the Nevada Southern Detention Center. 

In a recent earnings report from CoreCivic, company officials said they had several “soft-side” contracts in the works, although they did not provide details about where and when the contracts would take effect. 

“We are in various stages of negotiation on multiple idled facilities to provide additional bed capacity to ICE,” Hininger said during the August earnings call.    

The number of ICE detainees at the Nevada Southern Detention Center marks a dramatic increase from the number of people detained during former President Joe Biden’s administration. At the end of 2023, 163 people were detained at the facility, according to an ICE end-of-year report.

The other facilities to most exceed daily detention capacity are the Pine Prairie ICE Processing Center in Louisiana, Krome North Service Processing Center in Miami, the Clay County Justice Center in Indiana, and Kandiyohi County Jail in Minnesota. 

CoreCivic referred The Indy to ICE for additional information on any contracts and said in a statement that it stays "in regular contact with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and all our government partners to understand their changing needs, and we work within their established procurement processes.”

ICE responded “acknowledging receipt of your query. Thank you."

Elected officials raise questions

Officials have recently raised concerns about access to resources at the detention center. Last week, Rep. Steven Horsford (D-NV) put out a statement calling for increased oversight of the facility after being denied a visit, and the Latino Legislative Caucus, which visited earlier this summer, raised concerns about access to legal services. Last year, more than 30 reports of medical negligence, racial discrimination and verbal assault prompted a federal investigation into the facility. 

“I spoke with nine detainees today, and what they shared with me is deeply concerning,” Horsford said in a statement. “Medical treatment can take weeks; detainees do not have reliable access to immigration attorneys or resources; and many have been moved across state lines in the dead of night without advanced notice or understanding of where they were going.”

Discussion of a new facility comes as local jails have struggled to keep up with the fiscal demands of supporting ICE operations. In November, the Nye County Detention Center in Pahrump terminated a contract in place from 2019 to house ICE inmates alongside the county’s other inmates. Before the contract ended, it was the state’s second largest ICE holding facility. Local officials, however, said the cost of holding ICE detainees was too much for the county to bear. 

“I don’t think it's to anyone’s advantage except ICE,” former Republican Commissioner Donna Cox said about the contract during a county meeting. 

The Henderson Detention Center, which also holds a mix of local detainees and people arrested by ICE, has only seen a slight uptick in people detained by the agency. At the end of fiscal year 2023, 69 people were held there on behalf of ICE, in comparison to the 76 people held by the fiscal year 2025 to date, according to ICE data. 

Washoe County, meanwhile, has applied for a $430,000 grant from the Department of Homeland Security to upgrade its local jail to dedicated holding cells and office space for ICE. According to the sheriff’s office, the current facility is too small and can become congested.