In the month leading up to Election Day, the nation’s largest private prison company poured a million dollars into a super PAC supporting former President Donald Trump.
Geo Group’s donation is far from the largest corporate contribution to Trump’s war chest – but few industries will benefit from the incoming Trump administration like private prisons, which are expecting a surge in business driven by Trump’s plan to deport millions. of undocumented immigrants.
During a recent company earnings call, Geo Group CEO Brian Evans estimated that his company could generate $400 million a year by filling empty or underutilized beds in existing detention facilities to support what he called “future needs for ICE and the federal government,” referring to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
“What’s new is a potential sea change by the incoming Trump administration that is expected to implement more aggressive policies on interior and border immigration enforcement,” Geo Group founder George Zoley said on the call. “We believe that the private sector will play an important role in helping the government achieve its goals.”
Geo Group can expand the number of beds in its detention facilities, offer GPS monitoring for millions of migrants, and increase the safe transportation of migrants, according to executives on a Nov. 7 earnings call.
“We have assured ICE of our ability to quickly expand our ability to monitor and monitor several hundreds of thousands, or even several million individuals in order to achieve our federal immigration law compliance goals,” Geo Group President Wayne Calabrese said in a call.
Investors seem to have noticed, with the company’s share price up more than 80% since the start of the month.
‘A free-for-all’ for the company
Zoley and Evans both made direct contributions to the Save America Trump Joint Fundraising Committee, although the $11,600 contribution was a fraction of the million dollars that Geo Acquisition II Inc. – a subsidiary of a private prison company – donated to Make America Great Again Inc. over the last year.
Geo Acquisition II donated $500,000 in February before donating $250,000 in August and again in September, according to Federal Election Commission records.
Saurav Ghosh, a director at the watchdog group Campaign Legal Center, said the donations could be made through subsidiaries to comply with laws that prohibit federal contractors from making political contributions.
When Geo Group used a separate subsidiary – GEO Corrections Holdings, Inc – to donate money to a pro-Trump super PAC in 2016, the Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, arguing that the contributions violated federal restrictions. contractor contribution. The FEC ultimately dismissed the case after commissioners deadlocked on partisan lines, clearing the way for future contributions through sister companies that do not directly have contracts with the government.
“It’s still about a corporate perspective that wants to steer policy in a way that’s more favorable to everyday Americans,” Ghosh said.
Adelanto Detention Facility on November 15, 2013 in Adelanto, California.
John Moore/Getty Images, FILE
Executives from CoreCivic — the nation’s second-largest private prison company — said in a recent earnings call that they are prepared to meet anticipated demand for inmate beds from the incoming Trump administration. CoreCivic President Damon Hininger donated $300,000 to a joint fundraising committee between the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee last year.
“Trump’s first time in office was a free for all the companies that gave money to his campaign and his company,” said Robert Maguire, Vice President of Research and Data at the nonprofit watchdog group Citizens for Accountability and Ethics in Washington. “We’re going to see it go into overdrive during the second term, with private prison companies positioning themselves to benefit from this administration.”
The aim is to ‘educate’ officials
CoreCivic and Geo Group also run separate PACs said to “educate” officials from both parties about their services — though a review of the PACs’ contributions shows that Republican candidates and political action committees receive the majority of donations.
Political Action Committee Geo Group Inc. — which the company describes as a nonpartisan PAC funded by employee contributions — donated more than $670,000 to Republican candidates and aligned PACs over the past two years. The PAC donated about $17,500 to Democratic candidates and causes.
Of the $300,000 in contributions made by CoreCivic’s PAC, more than $277,000 has gone to Republican candidates and political action committees.
In a statement to ABC News, a spokesperson for CoreCivic said the company supports candidates and elected officials who “know the important solutions” that the company can provide, such as “reducing recidivism, alleviating prison overcrowding, and providing safe, humane immigration capacity.”
A spokesperson for the company added that CoreCivic is not contributing to any presidential candidate or campaign during the 2024 US presidential cycle.
A representative for Geo Group did not respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
‘We need prisoner assets’
Despite the Republican-leaning contributions, executives from both companies said the service was provided regardless of party affiliation.
“We’ve provided this important service under both Democratic and Republican administrations and when one party has taken control of the US Congress,” said Evans, CEO of GEO Group, on the recent earnings call.
Under the Trump administration – when ICE opened 40 new detention facilities, according to the American Civil Liberties Union – Geo Group’s revenue increased from $2.17 billion in 2016 to $2.35 billion in 2020. When President Joe Biden took office and immediately signed an executive order to eliminate the use of prisons private by the Department of Justice, they do not include the use of ICE’s private detention – and Geo Group’s revenue continues to grow to $ 2.41 billion in 2023, with ICE accounting for 43% of customer revenue.
According to Maguire, the private prison industry has now benefited from Trump’s new policies.
Trump has vowed to carry out “the largest deportation program in American history” and has put it in the hands of the former acting director of ICE Tom Homan, who is now president-elect “border czar”. According to Homan, the federal government needs “a large number of detention beds” to accommodate migrants before deporting them.
“What people don’t realize is we can’t just put (people) on a plane,” he said. “There’s a process we have to go through. You have to contact the country, they have to agree to receive it, and then they have to send us the travel documents. And it takes days to weeks. So we need a detention asset.”
Because ICE already relies on privately run detention facilities, Homan suggested that private prison companies would be the cheapest and most effective way to increase the state’s capacity to house migrants.
“Using outside contractors who run facilities like this as a core business function saves millions of dollars in taxpayer funds and improves the quality of care that detainees receive,” Homan wrote in his 2020 book, “Defend the Border and Save Lives.”
