Money Grab/Give government contracts to family and donors
GEO Group wins new ICE detention contracts after donations
The private-prison company, ICE’s second-largest contractor, won new detention contracts and facility reactivations in the year after Trump’s inauguration, with direct ICE obligations of about $710 million. Its executives, PAC and a subsidiary had given more than $1 million to the 2024 campaign and $500,000 to the inauguration committee.
What happened
GEO Group runs private prisons and immigration detention centers and gets about half its revenue from ICE. On a February 2025 earnings call its executives told investors the company faced an unprecedented opportunity under the new administration. On February 27, 2025, it announced a 15-year contract to reopen the 1,000-bed Delaney Hall in Newark, which it said would bring in more than $60 million a year. Reactivations in Michigan, Georgia and California followed.
A Project On Government Oversight review of 2025 immigration contracts found GEO received just over $710 million in ICE obligations, making it ICE’s second-largest contractor behind CSI Aviation’s $1.23 billion. GEO told investors 2025 was the best year for new business in its history, worth up to $520 million in annualized revenue, about $300 million of it from the reactivated facilities.
Florida Bulldog’s review of FEC records found that GEO chairman George Zoley’s political operation had funneled more than $5 million since the 2024 cycle to Trump, allied super PACs and Republican committees. The Campaign Legal Center has asked the FEC to investigate a $250,000 GEO contribution as a violation of the ban on contractor donations.
GEO hired ICE’s former detention chief, and the acting ICE director appointed in May 2026 spent a decade at GEO. The $710 million is a public-cost figure, not money to the Trump family. It is counted as taxpayer money.
Who benefited
GEO Group secured new contracts and facility activations as ICE’s budget tripled. Its executives told investors the awards would add hundreds of millions of dollars a year in revenue. Its 2025 ICE contract total of about $710 million placed it second among ICE contractors, essentially flat from $713 million the year before.
Who wanted something
GEO Group’s executives, PAC and a subsidiary had given more than $1 million to the 2024 campaign and $500,000 to the inauguration committee. As one of ICE’s largest contractors it had detention contracts and facility activations before the Department of Homeland Security, and stood to gain from the administration’s deportation drive. It hired the ICE official who had overseen detention.
Who lost out
About $710 million in public money went in one year to a contractor whose chairman was funding the president’s political allies and whose former executives now run the agency that pays it. You paid it. The people held in GEO facilities depend on a contractor that Human Rights Watch and state attorneys general have accused of abusive conditions.
Why it matters
A company’s chairman directed more than $5 million to the president’s side, the company reopened idle prisons under long-term federal contracts worth hundreds of millions, and its alumni took over the agency that awards them. The record shows the sequence and the revolving door. It does not show a documented quid pro quo.
Sources POGOCorpWatchPOGOThe PunchUp / Migrant InsiderFlorida BulldogPrison Legal News