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immigration and customs enforcement
Trump's Planned Immigrant Purge Sends Stagnant Private Prison Stocks Soaring
"The GEO Group was built for this unique moment... and the opportunity that it will bring," said the firm's chair.
Nov 08, 2024
The chairperson of a leading U.S. private prison corporation on Thursday gushed over the "unprecedented opportunity" presented by the prospect of Republican President-elect Donald Trump delivering on his campaign promise to begin the mass deportation of unauthorized immigrants on his first day in office.
As
Common Dreamsreported Thursday, Trump's campaign confirmed that "the largest mass deportation operation of illegal immigrants" ever is set to start immediately after the former president returns to the White House on January 20.
GEO Group stock surged more than 56% from the close of trading on Tuesday, Election Day, to Friday's closing bell. Competitor CoreCivic shares skyrocketed 57% over the same period. By contrast, GEO Group stock saw just a 21% rise in the three months preceding Election Day. CoreCivic inched up just 11% over the same period.
"The GEO Group was built for this unique moment in our company's [and] country's history, and the opportunity that it will bring," GEO Group founder and chairperson George Zoley said during a Thursday earnings call call in which he hailed the "unprecedented opportunity" ahead, according to a company statement and coverage by HuffPost.
"While our third-quarter results were below our expectations due to lower-than-expected revenues in our electronic monitoring and supervision services segment, we believe we have several potential sources of upside to our current quarterly run rate, with possible future growth opportunities across our diversified services platform," Zoley continued.
"We have 18,000 available beds across contracted and idle secure services facilities, which if fully activated, would provide significant potential upside to our financial performance," he noted. "We also believe we have the necessary resources to materially scale up the service levels in our [Intensive Supervision Appearance Program] and air and ground transportation contracts."
Zoley added that "as we evaluate and pursue future growth opportunities, we remain focused on the disciplined allocation of capital to further reduce our debt, deleverage our balance sheet, and position our company to evaluate options to return capital to shareholders in the future."
According to a study published last month by the American Immigration Council, deporting the estimated 13.3 million people in the U.S. without authorization in one massive sweep would cost around $315 billion, while expelling 1 million undocumented immigrants per year would cost nearly $1 trillion cumulatively over a decade.
On Thursday, Trump insisted "there is no price tag" on his deportation plan. He dismissed concerns that such an operation would require the use of concentration camps like the mass detention centers—which one Trump official euphemistically compared with "summer camp"—of his first administration.
The private prison industry has also thrived during the Biden administration, which is on pace to match the 1.5 million people deported during Trump's previous presidency. Although President Joe Biden signed an executive order "on reforming our incarceration system to eliminate the use of privately operated criminal detention facilities" early during his tenure, the directive did not apply to detainees in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody.
The number of immigrants detained by the Biden administration doubled between 2021 and 2023. In July 2023, more than 90% of immigrants detained by ICE each day were locked up in private facilities. In January 2020, the last month of Trump's first term, 81% of daily detainees were held in private lockups.
In 2022 a bipartisan U.S. Senate probe corroborated allegations of staff abuse against migrants jailed at facilities owned by LaSalle, a private prison company that
claims to be "run with family values." Whistleblowers and others have also revealed abuses from torture and medical neglect to sexual assault of children and forced sterilizations at privately run immigration detention centers.
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'US Families Torn Apart': Obama's War on Drugs Driving Surge in Deportations
Human Rights Watch report finds dramatic rise in deportations of non-U.S. citizens, including tens of thousands for marijuana possession
Jun 16, 2015
Under U.S. President Barack Obama, the war on drugs is driving a surge in deportations of non-U.S. citizens, ripping families apart for alleged drug possession--including the most minor amounts and in many cases years after the fact--a new report from Human Rights Watch reveals.
A Price Too High: US Families Torn Apart By Deportations for Drug Offenses (pdf) is based on data from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, as well as over 130 interviews with impacted people, lawyers, and authorities.
The 93-page report finds that deportations for drug charges increased by 43 percent between 2007 and 2012.
During this time period, 260,000 people were exiled from the country for drug offenses--and 34,000 of them for alleged marijuana possession.
While ICE claims it didn't keep track of the status of those deported, the study finds that the U.S. "is deporting a significant number of both permanent residents and undocumented individuals with strong family and community ties to the U.S., often for minor or old drug offenses."
"Unauthorized immigrants with any drug conviction, even a minor possession offense, face a lifetime bar from ever gaining legal status even if they have close U.S. citizen relatives," states the report.
According to the study, this trend is occurring despite growing criticism of the war on drugs and mass incarceration.
"Even as many U.S. states are legalizing and decriminalizing some drugs, or reducing sentences for drug offenses, federal immigration policy too often imposes exile for the same offenses," said Grace Meng, Human Rights Watch researcher and report author, in a press statement.
Marsha Austin, a 67-year-old great-grandmother, is one of the people impacted by these harsh policies. Austin is fighting deportation for a drug conviction from 20 years ago, even though she is in recovery from addiction. "Austin is desperate to remain in the U.S.," states the report. "Her husband is in very bad health, as is her daughter who suffered a breakdown after her own daughter's serious illness. Austin said, 'My kids and grandkids, that's what I'm living for now.'"
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