CORECIVIC & THE GEO GROUP
PROFITING FROM PAIN
Almost 90% of immigrants held in detention are in privately run facilities, according to an analysis by the data gathering and research group Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. The two largest private immigration detention facility operators are CoreCivic and The GEO Group.
Source: The New York Times/ICE. For the most current data on ICE detention, visit ICE.gov/detain/detention-management
Despite persistent allegations of human rights abuses including medical neglect, forced labor, and unsafe conditions, GEO and CoreCivic have contact with tens of thousands of immigrants every year.
In fact, these two companies are so critical to the administration's mass detention, surveillance, and deportation plans that stock prices for both soared after election results came in.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (H.R. 1) that passed the U.S. House of Representatives on May 22, 2025 provides for an enormous increase in ICE's budget, including $45 billion to expand immigration detention capacity to hold 100,000+ people at a time: an 800% increase in the budget for detention facilities.
WHO THEY ARE
THE GEO GROUP:
ICE'S #1 CONTRACTOR
Founded in 1984 as a division of The Wackenhut Corporation, GEO has been operating ICE detention facilities since 1987, after winning its first federal contract for the Aurora Detention Center in Colorado.
In addition to running detention facilities, GEO also has significant contracts for the transportation and surveillance of immigrants through subsidiaries. According to GEO's 2025 investor day presentation, they have an exclusive contract for ICE's Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP) to electronically monitor hundreds of thousands of immigrants each year. GEO Transport provides the majority of transportation services to ICE, with a fleet of 675 vehicles and an ICE Air subcontract through CSI Aviation, which the company has said could yield a revenue increase of up to $50 million. In 2024, GEO Transport completed approximately 2,400 "flight missions" for ICE.
Between all the contracts to GEO and its subsidiaries, GEO is ICE's single largest contractor and ICE is its single largest customer, representing 41% of its revenue in 2024.
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GEO isn't just a major government contractor; it has also been a major political donor, with their PAC and top executives contributing huge sums to Donald Trump and Republicans over the last several election cycles. In June 2024, GEO became the first corporation whose PAC maxed out allowable contributions to Donald Trump's campaign. The same month, a GEO subsidiary gave an additional half-million dollars to a pro-Trump super PAC.
Source: "The GEO Group: 2024 Contributions," OpenSecrets
GEO's efforts to influence politics and policy extend beyond campaign contributions. Of the 12 lobbyists representing them in 2024, 10 were former government employees. Among their previous roles: a U.S. representative, member of the first Trump transition team, legislative director for Senator Joni Ernst, deputy director of the 2024 Trump campaign, and Deputy Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs in the first Trump administration.
Current Attorney General Pam Bondi made $390,000 lobbying for GEO in 2019, and "border czar" Tom Homan has disclosed that he consulted for them within the two years prior to his joining the administration, receiving an undisclosed sum.
With so much to gain from mass detention and deportation—and such deep ties to the Trump administration—it isn't surprising that GEO's stock skyrocketed on the news of Trump's election last November.
Source: Yahoo Finance
By Inauguration Day, GEO's share price had climbed from its November 4 price of $14.30 to $35.85, a 150% increase. Also soaring: the personal fortune of GEO founder and executive chairman George Zoley. Himself an immigrant, Zoley has called the Trump administration's plans for mass detention and deportation an "unprecedented opportunity" for the company and its investors, suggesting the company stands to gain up to $1 billion in additional revenue.
CORECIVIC:
THE PRIVATE PRISON PIONEER
In January 1984, Corrections Corporation of America opened the doors of a Houston motel they leased and hastily converted into a “secure correctional facility” by adding a 12-foot, barbed-wire-topped fence around its perimeter. That evening, 87 immigrants spent the night in the country's first private immigration detention center. Co-founder Thomas Beasley later explained that the business of private prisons was a simple one:
“You just sell it like you were selling cars, or real estate, or hamburgers.”
The company, dubbed CoreCivic in a 2016 rebrand, is now the country's largest owner of partnership correctional, detention, and residential reentry facilities. With approximately 10,000 immigration detention beds, it is the second largest detention facility operator.
Like GEO, CoreCivic relies heavily on federal government contracts, which represented 52% of its 2023 revenue. It also exercises political influence through its PAC contributions, lobbying, and revolving-door hiring practices. Current board members include a former director of the U.S. Marshals Service, a former director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and a former White House cabinet secretary. CEO Damon Hininger reportedly hosted a fundraiser for Donald Trump in August 2024.
Understaffing & Ineffective Oversight
In 2014, the FBI investigated the company for falsifying staffing records and charging the Idaho Department of Corrections for staffing hours for positions left vacant. In a three-year period, Tennessee levied $44.67 million in fines against CoreCivic for contractual shortfalls.
In 2012, a riot broke out at Adams County Correctional Center, leaving one correctional officer dead and 20 other people injured. Subsequent audits at the same facility have flagged continued understaffing as a concern, with the Department of Justice's Office of the Inspector General noting in a 2016 report that the company's "history of understaffing and ineffective oversight has had a direct effect on the safety and security"
CoreCivic CEO Damon Hininger (center) celebrating the 2019 opening of the Trousdale Turner Correctional Center, which has gone on to become the prison with the highest homicide rate in the country. He should be careful with those big scissors—in one three-week period in 2024, five people were stabbed at Trousdale.
In 2024, the DOJ announced another investigation into CoreCivic. This time, they are looking at Tennessee's Trousdale Turner Correctional Center, which has the highest homicide rate of any prison in the country, and is also one of the most understaffed.
Beyond fines and investigations, CoreCivic has a long history of paying out settlements, with 86 known settlements totaling more than $70 million since 2016 alone. Allegations included least 22 wrongful deaths, medical neglect, understaffing, misleading investors about the "quality and value" of services, illegally recording inmates' calls with attorneys, unpaid overtime, and forced labor.
Besides persistent allegations of human rights abuses, unsafe working conditions, and defrauding investors, CoreCivic and The GEO Group have another thing in common:
Since 2019, nine banks have pledged to stop lending to CoreCivic and GEO, or the private prison industry as a whole:
Rather than cutting its ties to the industry, Citizens Bank deepened them. In 2020, Citizens took on additional responsibility in its existing relationship with CoreCivic. In 2024, it began financing GEO, too. Learn more about Citizens' history of financing CoreCivic and GEO.
*While Barclays committed to stop financing private prisons in 2019, in 2021, it decided to act as the lead underwriter for a municipal bond for two prisons owned by CoreCivic. It pulled out of the deal after more than 30 activist investors signed a letter condemning the deal.