New data released in November provide the best snapshot yet of how many people are being held at a federal immigration detention center in northern Michigan.
North Lake Processing Center, in the Lake County community of Baldwin, is owned by the private company GEO Group and has a capacity of 1,800 beds. But it’s been hard to know exactly how many people are being held there, because of the complex and opaque formula the federal government uses to publish average detainee counts.
However, according to new data, the facility is filling up.
As of the end of November, 1,352 people on average are being held per day in Baldwin, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement records.
The fiscal year for the agency started in October, so the yearly averages published in November are as close to a live headcount as it gets.
That makes North Lake Processing Center the 10th largest ICE detention facility in the U.S. by average daily population as of Nov. 28, and it means about two-thirds of the beds at the Lake County facility are full.
Before GEO Group inked a new contract with ICE in early 2025, the facility was a private prison, open on and off since 1999.
North Lake is the largest detention facility near many major Midwestern cities such as Chicago or Detroit. But people detained there could be coming from all across the country, as ICE increasingly moves people between facilities and across state lines.
