from the series Something I Said…
By DWIGHT HOBBES
President Trump’s order of the day continues to be bald faced corruption. He appointed
former GEO Group executive David Venturella to run ICE. A la one hand washing the other,
GEO Group and subsidiaries donated just under $2 million to Trump’s 2024 campaign. GEO
Group, in fact, holds numerous government contracts for detention facilities and saw serious
profit increases as the administration ramped up mass deportations.
GEO was more than $250 million in the green for 2025, up almost 700% from 2024.
They certainly aren’t spending that profit on justice advocates, journalists and investigators
documented substandard ICE conditions. Added to which, their snout is deep in Trump’s trough.
Half the corporation’s conflict of interest revenue is ICE contracts, a clear all for Trump’s mass
deportation agenda: it runs nearly two dozen detention facilities and provides transportation
services and electronic monitoring through a subsidiary, BI Incorporated. Indeed with Trump’s
return to the presidency, the dinner bill rang, outfits racing to gorge themselves at that trough,
cheek by jowl. This includes CoreCivic which owns or manages more 70 prisons, jails,
detention centers and halfway houses – roughly 80,000 beds. While the plan to exploit
abandoned Minnesota warehouses was thwarted, CoreCivic got around that, investing a million
dollars in reopening Appleton, the state’s 1,600-bed private prison Prairie Correctional
Facility, shuttered since 2010. The Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and
Customs Enforcement proposed a five-year deal to lock up men and women there. CoreCivic
posted job openings for wardens and guards and DHS released a 148-page intake process.
GEO’s poster institution Delany Hall shut down the detainees month long hunger strike
by retaliating with solitary confinement and prison transfers. This, of course, didn’t change the
abysmal living environment – among other miseries, spoiled food and negligible medical care.
The company operates detention facilities for ICE across the country, many of which have long
histories of accused abuse . GEO Group claims the allegations at Delaney Hall are “politically
motivated outside groups to dismantle ICE.” But detainees across the country have sued over
poor conditions at immigrant detention centers. GEO Group issued a statement that its detention
centers comply with government standards and provides around-the-clock access to medical care
and balanced meals. That’s not the story observers who’ve been inside tell.
GEO covered its butt, claiming immunity to forced labor lawsuits, using a legal doctrine
best known for shielding cops in police brutality cases. You only need this kind of protection
from the law if you’re doing something for which you don’t want to be held accountable.
Meanwhile, DHS told the media “The Acting ICE Director abides by all ethics requirements,”
the statement read. In a pig’s eye.
Let’s get down to brass tacks. According to the government’s own data, 2026 is
already the deadliest year in immigration detention since DHS was founded. Private
incarceration is a cash cow and outfits like GEO Group have every intention of milking that cow
and the expense of human beings.
