By Dan Christensen, FloridaBulldog.org
Remember the duck test? If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.
What then to make President Trump’s decision on Day One of his second, non-consecutive term to revoke President Biden’s 2021 executive order phasing out Justice Department contracts with private prison companies?
Trump acted one month after the Trump Vance Inaugural Committee accepted $1 million in contributions from the nation’s two largest private-prison operators. That’s $500,000 from The GEO Group of Boca Raton (NYSE: GEO) and $500,000 from CoreCivic, the Brentwood, TN outfit (NYSE: CXW) once known as the Corrections Corporation of America.
Audacious bribery or innocuous political contribution?
Certainly not bribery of a kind as recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court. Money funds free speech, it ruled in 2010’s Citizens United, and “this Court now concludes that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.”
Really? It sure flunks the duck test. That $1 million is like an overstuffed duck. The timing of the contribution quacks loudly. And the pudgy duck is paddling in a swamp of special corporate interests of President Trump’s own devising.
GEO WAS ‘BUILT FOR THIS UNIQUE MOMENT’
Two days after Trump’s election, GEO founder and executive chairman George Zoley gave an audience of stock analysts an enthusiastic picture of his company’s prospects under Trump. His remarks came after he and The Geo Group PAC had combined in 2024 to give more than $140,000 to three pro-Trump Super PACs.
“What is new is an expected sea change by the incoming Trump administration that is expected to implement a much more aggressive policy towards interior and border immigration enforcement. We believe that the private sector will play a critical role in assisting the government in carrying out its objectives,” Zoley said.
“The GEO Group was built for this unique moment in our country’s history and the opportunities that it will bring.”
Zoley sees GEO as “well-positioned” to help U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) increase its “secure residential housing” at migrant processing centers by activating more than 17,000 of its now “underutilized” beds.
“We believe we have the necessary technology and staffing resources to scale up the current utilization of the ISAP contract by several hundreds of thousands and upward to several millions of participants,” Zoley said.
Zoley also foresees surging new profits from its Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP), an electronic monitoring scheme currently used by both ICE and the Department of Homeland Security on 182,500 “participants.”
Thus, the Trump/Zoley vision: migrant evacuation on an industrial scale.
GEO’S FRIEND AT JUSTICE: PAM BONDI
Zoley sees even more money to be made from GEO’s nationwide ground and air transport services that “we can scale up materially for domestic as well as international travel.” Presumably, to include shuttle services to the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, where Trump has said he plans to temporarily stash 30,000 migrants alongside the 15 remaining 9/11 detainees. The first transport of 10 “high-threat” migrants – criminals, presumably – arrived in Guantanamo on Tuesday, according to CBS News.
Here’s what The GEO Group has to say about itself: “GEO’s mission is to develop innovative public-private partnerships with government agencies around the globe that deliver high quality, cost-efficient solutions while enhanced rehabilitation and community reintegration programs to the men and women entrusted to GEO’s care.”
Any public-private partnerships with the U.S. Department of Justice will be approved by Trump’s freshly minted Attorney General – and former GEO lobbyist – Pam Bondi. Bondi lobbied for GEO as a registered lobbyist with Ballard Partners.
According to U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Bondi failed to disclose her work lobbying for GEO as a potential conflict of interest during her confirmation hearing.
“Bondi lobbied for The GEO Group, a private prison company that has faced criticism for safety violations, providing inadequate healthcare, and poor management practices. These actions have negatively impacted the welfare and rights of incarcerated individuals and immigration detainees, and The GEO Group stands to earn hundreds of millions of dollars during the Trump Administration, as ICE is its largest source of revenue,” Durbin said in a press release.
The GEO Group, founded in 1984 as a division of The Wackenhut Corporation, reported revenues of $1.82 billion through the first nine months of 2024.
In the Nov. 7 earnings call with analysts, GEO CEO Brian Evans explained how much more revenue GEO hopes to soon collect: upwards of $425 million. $300 million of that, with margins averaging between 25 and 30 percent, would come from filling 10,000 available beds at “company owned currently idled facilities” in Texas, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina and New Jersey, he said.
“Additionally we currently have approximately 8,000 underutilized beds at existing ICE and U.S. Marshals’ facilities already under contract which could generate approximately $100 million,” Evans said. GEO’s secure air service “is expected to generate approximately $25 million in annualized revenues and we believe we have the capabilities to expand the provision of these services to assist ICE in moving several hundreds of thousands of additional individuals if needed,” he added.
In many ways, Zoley’s pay day from Trump’s win has already arrived. Last August, Zoley filed paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission declaring that between Aug. 9 and Aug. 13 he purchased 250,000 shares of GEO common stock for between $12.179 and $12.341 per share. That brought Zoley’s total GEO stock holdings to 3,950,904 shares.
On Election Day, Nov. 5, GEO stock closed at $15.13. The next day, following Trump’s victory, it jumped more than $6 a share. By the end of the week it closed at $25.36 a share.
On Wednesday, GEO stock closed at $28.40. If Zoley still holds those 3.95 million shares, they’re worth more than $112.2 million.
Leave a Reply