Private Prison Exec Calls Mass Deportation Plans ‘Unprecedented Opportunity’

On today’s quarterly earnings call, for-profit prison operator GEO Group’s new CEO announced that this is an “unprecedented time in our company’s history.”   

“We believe the scale of the opportunity before our company is unlike any we’ve previously experienced,” J. David Donahue said. 

For-profit prison companies CoreCivic and GEO Group are primed to benefit from Trump’s white supremacist agenda to round up, detain, and deport millions of immigrants. In January, Trump signed the Laken Riley Act, which requires mandatory detention of undocumented immigrants who are charged with low-level offenses, including shoplifting, as well as more serious crimes. Trump’s Attorney General, Pam Bondi, is a former GEO Group lobbyist. 

On today’s call, GEO Group estimated that based on public statements from ICE, implementation of the Laken Riley Act would require at least an additional 60,000 detention beds. Some estimates have put that number at over 110,000 beds. Executive Chairman George Zoley said the new law will also require a “significant ramp up” in electronic monitoring services. 

Zoley said that they “expect the upside potential from all these opportunities could represent as much as $800 million to $1 billion in incremental annualized revenues.” The company is currently $1.7 billion in debt.  

“This is a unique moment in our company’s history,” Zoley said. “We believe we are well positioned to scale up our diversified segments in secure housing, transportation, electronic monitoring to meet the changing needs of this new administration, and to continue to enhance value for our shareholders.” 

Zoley said GEO Group is “the single largest contractor to ICE” and the “largest provider of secure transportation services for ICE.” 

A GEO Group subsidiary contracts with ICE to transport deportees to their country of origin—another source of revenue for the company. Zoley said the company expects “an increase in the number of removal flights” which could generate $40 million to $50 million in annualized revenues. 

“During 2024, we assisted in the transport and relocation travel of 160,000 persons,” he said. “We believe we can scale up materially for domestic and international travel for up to 500,000 individuals or more if called upon.”

Zoley said that because of “the unprecedented volume of new business opportunities confronting GEO” he “is inclined to stay beyond the end of my present employment agreement that expires July 1, 2026.” 

“We believe our company faces an unprecedented opportunity at this time to play a role in supporting President Trump’s new administration policies,” said Zoley on today’s call. “We’ve taken several important steps to be prepared to meet that opportunity.”

Shortly after taking office, Trump reversed long-standing policies that barred, with few exceptions, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers from making arrests in sensitive or protected locations, such as schools, hospitals, and houses of worship. This week, the Department of Homeland Security announced that undocumented immigrants, including children, must register with the federal government. Those who do not may be fined, imprisoned, or both. 

GEO Group announced today that it has been awarded a 15-year contract by ICE to provide support services for the establishment of a federal immigration processing center at Delaney Hall, a 1,000-bed detention facility in Newark, New Jersey, owned by GEO Group. The company says the contract is expected to generate more than $60 million in the first full year of operations, and estimates that the 15-year value of the contract will be approximately $1 billion. A New Jersey state law passed in 2021 prohibits private companies from operating immigration detention centers in the state, but GEO Group and CoreCivic challenged the law in federal court; in 2023, a federal judge put the law on hold while the case was ongoing.

Even before Trump’s inauguration, GEO Group said it was making a $70 million investment in capital expenditures so it could “deliver expanded detention capacity, secure transportation, and electronic monitoring services” to ICE. 

Revenue for private prison companies may soar under Trump, but the industry also thrived during Biden’s presidency. Biden banned the DOJ from renewing existing contracts with private prison companies—an executive order that Trump has rescinded—but no such restrictions were placed on ICE. 

Biden’s DOJ joined CoreCivic and GEO Group in challenging New Jersey’s ban on private immigration detention facilities. In fiscal year 2024, ICE obligated more than $747 million to GEO Group, according to the Project on Government Oversight’s analysis of federal data. Last year, CoreCivic CEO Damon Hininger boasted that the company had experienced “the greatest level of procurement activity we have seen with eyes in over a decade.” 

Earlier this month, CoreCivic had its first earnings call since Trump’s inauguration. Hininger reported that they had been speaking with the Trump transition team “on a daily basis since the election” and that “there is a very strong focus on detention.” He estimated that there would be a need for between 150,000 and 200,000 additional immigration beds.

Hininger said that Trump’s presidency “has ushered in significant policy and legislative changes that directly impact our business,” and that “this is truly one of the most exciting periods in my career with the company.”

Last year, Hininger donated a total of more than $200,000 to Republican candidates, including Trump, and the Republican National Committee, according to Open Secrets, an organization that publishes information on political donations. His total compensation for fiscal year 2023 was more than $5 million. 

On Thursday, CoreCivic announced that it had modified its contract with ICE to add capacity for detainees at several of the company’s for-profit detention facilities. 

“We are entering a period where our government partners, particularly our federal government partners, are expected to have increased demand,” Hininger said in the company’s press release. “We anticipate additional contracting activity that will help satisfy their growing needs.”