CHICAGO (WLS) — It has been called the largest immigration detention center in the Midwest and may soon accommodate individuals from Chicago detained by ICE due to President Donald Trump’s intensified enforcement.

Situated at the end of a rural road in Baldwin, Michigan, enveloped by forest with few homes, the ABC7 I-Team paid a visit to the North Lake Correctional Facility earlier this month.

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Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) confirmed the first individual apprehended by the agency was transferred there for housing on Monday, June 16, though no additional information was provided by the agency.

Civil rights and immigration advocates have warned for years the company that owns the facility — the private prison and electronic monitoring company GEO Group Inc. — has a troubled past.

Lined along state route M-37 last weekend, Michiganders displayed their displeasure for GEO Group re-opening the North Lake Correctional Facility under the new ICE contract.

“We don’t want a Michigan where our children grow up in the shadow of the largest ICE detention center in the Midwest,” said Maggie Doyle, a volunteer with the organization “No Detention Centers in Michigan.”

The North Lake facility can house up to 1,800 people, both men and women “exclusively for ICE,” according to company contract records reviewed by the I-Team.

Since Illinois has laws in place banning the use of private prisons, as well as county jail detention agreements with ICE, immigrants recently detained have been transported to detention facilities in surrounding states.

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In an interview with the I-Team earlier this month, Chicago ICE Field Office Director Sam Olson acknowledged the lack of detention space has been a challenge for the agency tasked with carrying out one of President Trump’s top policy directives.

“Detention capacity is always an issue,” Olson said. “Anybody that we arrest here in Illinois, we don’t have any immigration detention in Illinois per the state law. We just can’t contract with anybody in Illinois, so anybody that we arrest have to go somewhere else.”

Now, that “somewhere else” could be the North Lake Correctional facility, more than 260 miles away from Chicago.

Recently unsealed contract records between ICE and GEO Group state the North Lake facility will provide “multi-state detention facility support for the Chicago, IL Area of Responsibility (AOR).”

Eunice Cho, a senior staff attorney for the ACLU’s National Prison Project, worked on the lawsuit that led to the release of these records.

“It’s highly likely that people who are being apprehended in places like Chicago and the surrounding area will be sent to North Lake,” Cho said.

In its announcement this past March, GEO Group said it had finalized the contract with ICE to re-open the North Lake facility as an “immigration processing center” and that the contract is expected to generate the company “in excess of $70 million in annualized revenues in the first full year of operations.”

A recent earnings report notes 43% of GEO Group’s $600 million in annual revenues comes from contracts with ICE.

“It’s no secret that the CEO of GEO Group has celebrated the advent of new anti-immigrant policies,” Cho said.

According to GEO Group’s contract, the closest airport to the detention facility is in Grand Rapids, nearly 100 miles away from the facility. The closest train station is in Battle Creek, Michigan, 149 miles away from North Lake.

With the facility located in rural Lake County, Michigan, advocates like Cho fear immigrants detained and housed there will have restricted access to their attorneys, and their loved ones.

“Access to counsel at immigration detention facilities is incredibly difficult,” Cho said. “It can take many hours for somebody to drive from the area up to North Lake… and ICE has, in the past, made it incredibly difficult for even their attorneys to call clients in detention.”

A spokesperson for GEO Group told the I-Team it provides “in-person and virtual legal and family visitation,” along with “around the clock access to medical care… general and legal library access, dietician-approved meals, along with religious and specialty” meals.

North Lake is not a new facility.

The detention center was designed and built by GEO Group in 1997, and most recently held a contract for the Federal Bureau of Prisons from 2019 to 2022, according to company records.

That Bureau of Prisons contract ended when former President Joe Biden signed an executive order, ending all federal contracts with private prison companies.

President Trump reversed that executive order shortly after taking office for his second term this year.

Michigan newspaper MLive reported that GEO Group expects to hire nearly 500 people for the North Lake facility’s operations, which would be the largest influx of jobs to the region since the prison’s previous contract.

The I-Team found during its last contract period, the North Lake facility faced allegations of neglect and abuse.

Jesse Franzblau with the National Immigrant Justice Center said North Lake’s history is well known and the facility is “notorious for inhumane conditions.”

The facility has faced allegations in court of inadequate conditions and inmate abuse, including a North Lake facility case manager who pleaded guilty in 2023 to making false statements about having sexual relations with an inmate.

Officials with Michigan’s Department of Corrections (MDOC) and Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA) tell the I-Team there are no state licensing requirements, nor any state oversight of the facility.

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment on any role the state would play in overseeing conditions in the North Lake facility.

GEO Group told the I-Team, “Our support services are monitored by ICE and other organizations within the Department of Homeland Security to ensure strict compliance with ICE detention standards.”

Additionally, the company said, “all of GEO’s ICE Processing Centers are independently accredited by the American Correctional Association (ACA) and the National Commission on Correctional Health Care (NCCHC).”

A spokesperson for NCCHC said it’s the organization’s policy not to verify with the public whether a private corrections facility has been accredited by its standards. The ACA did not respond to requests for comment.

Franzblau believes Congress will ultimately have a role in ensuring safe conditions behind the prison walls.

“Oversight was not enough to prevent the type of persistent, systematic abuse that happens within ICE detention,” Franzblau said. “And now, without these mechanisms, and with the administration further cracking down on congressional access, it’ll be even more difficult to have any type of accountability when abuses happen. It is really up to Congress.”