Private prison billionaires gave early to Trump, and now they’re cashing in

One of many privately run prisons across the United States that stand to cash in from Trump's plans to round up immigrants. In what will be a national disgrace, places like this would be turned into highly profitable concentration camps to hold productive workers thrown into them only because of their immigration status. After the immigrants, Trump threatens to lock up any and all opponents of his administration that he deems fit for imprisonment. The owners of these potential concentration camps are billionaires already raking in huge profits from stock prices soaring because of the Trump election. | George Walker IV/AP

WASHINGTON—The nation’s top two private prison companies, GEO Group and Core Civic, and their executives gave early to convicted felon Donald Trump’s Republican presidential campaign. Now they’re preparing to cash in on his mass deportation plans.

Not that they did all that badly under Democratic President Joe Biden, records show. They lost some federal contracts, but not those dealing with detaining and expelling migrants. There, Biden, contrary to his own campaign promises, made an exception.

As a result, GEO racked up a billion dollars in multi-year prison construction and detention contracts from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency alone under Biden’s administration. CoreCivic reaped half that sum.

That pales compared to what they expect from Trump. He’s already said he’ll spend “whatever it takes” to detain, imprison, and deport the estimated 11 million undocumented people from the U.S. The American Immigration Council, a pro-migrant group, estimates the cost at $88 billion a year for the next 11 years—assuming Trump detains and deports a million people a year.

That’s the goal of top Trump advisor Elon Musk, a multibillionaire and, ironically, a migrant who illegally violated his initial student visa, making him one of the “illegal immigrants” he rails against. Instead of attending Stanford University, Musk launched his businesses.

Trump made hate of undocumented people, the majority of them people of color, a centerpiece of his victory over Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris. His hate and fear of migrants, faithfully echoed by his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, were a staple of his appeal to white voters influenced by the racist campaigning.

Trump’s campaign was fueled by loads of corporate cash, much of it “dark money” hard to trace. Geo Group and Core Civic and their CEOs were open about their donations to the white nationalist Republican nominee, however. When it comes to concern for profits, like billionaires in many fields, the private prison moguls are turning to fascism as the tool to use to maintain and grow their wealth. They fear that under liberal democracy their wealth is being endangered. Too many people, for their liking, are winning wage increases and forming unions and they want it stopped.

GEO Group’s campaign finance committee gave $3.26 million to Trump and Republican campaigns, Open Secrets reports. That included a million dollars to Trump’s campaign finance committee, Make America Great Again. Its executives donated another $64,719 directly to Trump.

A GEO subsidiary added a $500,000 donation to a pro-Trump group, reported Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW).

CoreCivic dumped $748,641 into political campaigns in this election cycle. One-third of it, from top honchos, went to the Republican National Committee alone, and another $21,286 went to Trump. The rest, except for $50,000 from CoreCivic’s campaign finance committee to the Democratic Lieutenant Governors Association, went to other GOP candidates.

Stock values soared

When Trump won the election on November 5, stock values for the two private prison firms jumped, just as they did after his first election to the White House eight years ago. The increases last week: CoreCivic rose 29% the day after the election. Geo Group stock rose 42% that same day.

Call that “return on investment”—in Trump.

“If you’re rounding up millions of people, you’re going to need somewhere to put them, at least before you deport them,” Robert Maguire of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington told Fortune. “That could see a rise in the use of private prisons.”

This election cycle wasn’t the first time GEO funded Trump. It helped subsidize his privately paid for 2017 inaugural. And all ten times one top GEO officer came to D.C. to lobby the feds, he stayed at the now-sold Trump hotel three blocks from the White House, putting money into Trump’s pocket. Maguire called that “pretty conspicuous.”

“One of the ways it’s sort of obvious to see why they would do this is the way you sort of see their stock rise when almost anything related to Trump happens.”

CoreCivic will cash in, too, as it has empty beds that ICE can use when its agents start rounding up undocumented people. The firm reported occupancy at its private prisons rose from 72% in April-June to 75% in July-September. Which means one-quarter of their beds are vacant.

During Trump’s prior regime, the government expanded its immigration detention system by over 50%, a move that “overwhelmingly benefitted private prison companies”, the ACLU noted. The number of imprisoned migrants peaked at 55,000 in 2019.

The ACLU, a top critic of private prisons, says they are not as secure or as safe as publicly run facilities, and that a for-profit industry where companies make more money when more people are arrested and behind bars is inherently problematic.

Of course, the private prison firms didn’t do too badly under Biden, either. Though the number of their federal contracts declined, they didn’t totally disappear. And they still earned billions for running state and local prisons for profit.

ICE agents are infamous for indiscriminate roundups and deportations of Black and brown people—migrants and citizens—from farms, factories, schools, churches, and especially meat production plants.

“As of July 2023, ICE detained on average 30,003 people each day. This is a significant increase from the start of the Biden administration in January 2021, when ICE held an average of 15,444 people in detention each day,” the ACLU reported.

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CONTRIBUTOR

Mark Gruenberg

Award-winning journalist Mark Gruenberg is head of the Washington, D.C., bureau of People's World. He is also the editor of the union news service Press Associates Inc. (PAI). Known for his reporting skills, sharp wit, and voluminous knowledge of history, Mark is a compassionate interviewer but tough when going after big corporations and their billionaire owners.