BALDWIN, MICH. (WWJ) A shuttered Northern Michigan prison is getting ready to reopen as one of the largest U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities in the country.
North Lake Correctional Facility, which idled in 2022, is slated to open its doors as an 1,800 bed (ICE) detention facility. Its physical address is the village of Baldwin, with a population of about 1,000, about 84 miles north of Grand Rapids.
In late March; GEO Group, a private Florida-based prison company that owns the facility, announced it had entered into a contract with ICE "for the immediate activation of a federal immigration processing center at the...1,800-bed North Lake Facility (the “Facility”)."
“We expect that our company-owned North Lake Facility in Michigan will play an important role in helping meet the need for increased federal immigration processing center bed space," George Zoley, Executive Chairman of GEO Group, said in the statement.
This is the latest in a wave of for-profit prison companies securing contracts with the federal government as the number of people in ICE custody continues to grow. As of April 2025; nearly 48,000 were in ICE custody.
According to ICE data, the largest detention center in the country is Adams County Correctional Center with an Average Daily Population (ADP) of 2,154, in Natchez, Mississippi. That's followed by the Stewart Detention Facility in Lumpkin, Georgia with an ADP of 1,600.
A crowd protested in Grand Rapids in April over the prospect of North Lake becoming an ICE facility. However, U.S. Representatives Bill Huizenga and John Moolenaar have supported it, arguing that another closure of North Lake would cost Lake County (where it's located) some 300 jobs, MLIVE reported.
The prison, which has closed four times since 1999, is the largest employer and taxpayer in Lake County, according to the news outlet.
According to a report by University of Michigan Poverty Solutions; Lake County has the highest child poverty rate in Michigan at 32%, nearly twice the state average (of 17.8%).
GEO Group has not given a timeline for exactly when the ICE facility will open.