GEO Group CEO Calls Lawsuits Against ICE Detention Facilities “Unwarranted” and “Unconstitutional”

On GEO Group’s quarterly earnings call on Wednesday, CEO George Zoley called litigation against immigration jails “unprecedented” and “unconstitutional.” 

“There’s been litigation regarding overseeing medical services, food services, general cleanliness, etc,” he said. “It’s really unprecedented [and] I believe it’s fundamentally unconstitutional.” 

His remarks were first reported in the author’s substack, The Carceral Report.

Private prison companies GEO Group and CoreCivic have been accused of detaining people in inhumane conditions where people are allegedly brutalized, subjected to sleep deprivation, and denied medical care. 

So far this year, 18 people have died in ICE custody, which puts the agency on pace to surpass the near-record number of deaths recorded for 2025, when 31 people died. According to data collected by lawyer and journalist Andrew Free, half of those deaths occurred in either CoreCivic or GEO Group run detention facilities. 

Trump’s mass deportation campaign has meant millions of dollars in new contracts for GEO Group and CoreCivic. Zoley and former CoreCivic CEO Damon Hininger have each made political contributions totaling more than a million dollars, including donations to the Republican National Committee and to PACs affiliated with President Donald Trump, according to an investigation by The Appeal.

For the first quarter of 2026, GEO Group reported total revenues of $705.2 million, a 17 percent increase from the first quarter 2025. Despite the growing revenue, GEO Group is still carrying over a billion dollars in debt. 

On Wednesday’s call, Zoley announced that the Trump administration was reconsidering its plan to convert warehouses into immigration jails, a proposal that has been met with widespread opposition and revulsion. On Wednesday’s call, Zoley said that “the warehouse project has been paused,” and that DHS is considering purchasing “turn-key” facilities that may be less “politically problematic.”

“I think they’re [DHS] starting to look at the price tags of each of the facilities and doing comparisons as to whether the existing turnkey facilities may be a better play, financially, operationally, so forth, than some of these other locations, which have been politically problematic,” he said. “All of the plans, I think, are being reviewed, assessed, and I’m sure they’ll come up with some reasonable conclusions.”

Zoley told participants that the federal government is considering buying “approximately 10 privately owned turn-key ICE [Immigrations and Customs Enforcement] processing centers.” 

“We have been in discussions with ICE regarding the potential sale of multiple facilities,” Zoley said on the call.

This announcement prompted a participant to ask during the question and answer session: “Why do they want to own the facilities rather than contract with third parties?”

Zoley replied that if the federal government owns the facilities, “there are more protections from unwarranted litigation that infringes upon the activities of the ICE processing centers.” 

“As some blue states are considering more active involvement in oversight of facilities, I think the logical solution to much of that is federal ownership of the facilities,” he continued. 

If the federal government owns the buildings, it will “provide stronger credibility in the courts as to the Supremacy Clause in the Constitution,” and help establish that “states can only have very limited involvement in those policies and programs.” Under the Supremacy Clause, federal law takes precedence over state laws. 

In March, The Lever reported that the federal government was considering buying detention facilities, but Zoley’s comments seem to be one of the first times that an industry executive has admitted that the motivation for the potential purchases is to circumvent state law. 

Setareh Ghandehari, Advocacy Director at Detention Watch Network, told The Appeal in an email that Zoley’s comments reflect how “ICE is doing whatever it can to expand detention capacity without transparency, oversight or accountability.”

“ICE recognizes the changing tide of overwhelming public opposition to detention across the country, and therefore is trying to evade public scrutiny while continuing to carry out the administration’s mass detention and deportation agenda unchecked,” Ghandehari said.

Numerous states have laws on the books that protect incarcerated people’s rights. In April, Washington State asked a federal court to order GEO Group to allow health inspectors inside the Northwest ICE Processing Center, in accordance with state law that empowers investigators to conduct unannounced visits at private detention facilities. 

Washington previously sued GEO Group for allegedly violating the state minimum wage law by paying detainee workers $1 a day. A federal jury agreed and ordered GEO Group to pay $23.2 million. GEO Group has appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. 

More than a third of all ICE detainees are incarcerated in GEO Group facilities, although Zoley told call participants that the population had recently decreased. Nationally, as of April 4, there were about 60,000 people in ICE custody, the lowest number of people detained so far this year, according to the organization TRAC, which tracks immigration data.

About 21,000 people are detained in GEO Group’s ICE facilities, down from a high of 24,000 people earlier this year, Zoley said. He attributed the decline, in part, to the “recent transition in leadership at the Department of Homeland Security, and the 82-day partial government shutdown of DHS, resulting in lapse in annual appropriations for ICE.” 

In addition to detention beds, ICE contracts with GEO Group for transportation and surveillance services, like electronic monitoring, under the company’s Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP.) The number of people on ISAP GPS monitors has more than doubled since the start of 2025, although the number of people on the program’s mobile app has declined, according to the company. There are currently more than 48,000 people on ISAP’s ankle monitors. 

Despite the recent decline in detainee population, Zoley seemed optimistic that the federal government was still on track to reach its goal of securing 100,000 immigration beds. 

“We believe the federal government is continuing to pursue the priority of increasing immigration detention capacity to approximately 100,000 beds or more and consolidate to fewer, larger facilities,” Zoley said. “As a 40-year partner to ICE, we expect to be part of the solution.”

Despite GEO Group’s mutually beneficial relationship with President Trump, it hasn’t been entirely smooth sailing for the private prison company. 

In 2025, Corey Lewandowski, a senior advisor to former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem, allegedly told Zoley that he wanted to be paid in exchange for contracts awarded to GEO Group, according to an NBC News investigation published this year. Zoley declined. A senior DHS official told the news outlet that after Zoley refused to pay, Lewandowski directed them not to award any more contracts to GEO Group. However, there was no mention of the scandal on the call. 

CoreCivic held its earnings call Thursday, the day after GEO Group’s call. The average daily population across all of the facilities CoreCivic manages was about 57,000 individuals during the first quarter of 2026 compared with about 51,000 during the same period last year, according to the company.

Swindle said that federal agencies, primarily ICE and the U.S. Marshal Service, comprised 58 percent of CoreCivic’s total revenue in the first quarter. Revenue from ICE increased significantly from the first quarter of 2025 to the first quarter of 2026—from $133.2 million to $261.3 million, according to a company press release.  

Like GEO Group, CoreCivic’s ICE detainee population has also decreased, Swindle said.

CoreCivic executives reassured call participants that the decline in population was temporary and could be attributed, in part, to the deployment of ICE agents to assist with airport security during the government shutdown and “overall enforcement strategy adjustments within DHS,” said CFO David Garfinkle.

Swindle told participants that they “cannot predict how quickly population growth will resume,” but that “the administration continues to indicate a strong emphasis on border security and active ICE enforcement.”

“What has potentially changed is how DHS plans to meet its detention needs going forward, including through the conversion of vacant warehouse facilities and immigration detention facilities and/or the acquisition of existing turnkey facilities,” Swindle said. “We do not know the future of that strategy.”