[Consultant32452]

I may be parsing it incorrectly, but I take "private prisons" less literally since I know that private prisons are the vast minority. Instead of thinking about the prison itself, consider the "prison industrial complex" in a way that you might consider the "military industrial complex." There are a lot of people who make a lot of money off our prison system, and it includes everyone from food suppliers to lawyers.

Also, private companies now house nearly half of immigrant detainees including a $1 Billion facility the Obama administration purchased to hold Central American women and children seeking asylum in the US.

Specific examples of lobbying are easy enough to google. I might suggest starting with the "Kids for Cash" scandal where two judges got millions of dollars in kickbacks from for-profit juvenile detention centers for sending more kids to their facilities.