Wardens and executives of the second-largest private prison company in the country held its annual leadership conference at a golf resort near Miami — one owned by President Donald Trump. The move shines a light on the increasingly close relationship between the president, the private for-profit prison industry and his administration's anti-immigration agenda.
The Florida-based GEO Group typically holds its conference near it Boca Raton headquarters, but following the 2016 election cycle — in which the company heavily endorsed pro-Trump super PACs — the four-day conference was relocated to the 800-acre Trump National Doral, the property which is "the single biggest contributor to Trump’s cash flow," the Washington Post reported.
GEO Group and its subsidiaries have reeled in over $4 billion in contracts from the government over the last decade, and operates "about 140 prisons, immigration-detention centers and other facilities nationwide and derives nearly half of its revenue from federal contracts," the Post reported.
A GEO Group subsidiary, GEO Corrections Holdings, donated $225,000 to a pro-Trump super PAC Rebuilding America Now, as well as an additional $250,000 to Trump's inaugural committee, according to the Post.
For nearly two years, Trump ran as a candidate who pledged to "drain the swamp."
The success of the for-profit prison industry also heavily coincided with the administration's crackdown on immigration. Following Trump's electoral victory, private prison company stocks skyrocketed. GEO Group share prices tripled, despite hitting a low just a year prior, according to the Post. Between 2015-2016, the company spent drastically more than it had in at least the previous 12 years.
The company then won the government's first contract for an immigration detention center — it's worth tens of millions each year, according to the Post. In February, Attorney General Jeff Sessions revoked the Obama-era initiative to phase out the use of private contractors to run federal prisons, the move delivered the industry yet another major victory.
GEO Group hired two former Sessions aides, David Stewart and Ryan Robichaux, as well as Brian Ballard, a major Trump fundraiser who represented Trump Organization as lobbyists in the past year, the Post reported.
The private prison industry in America has a long, abusive and unjust history that is now positioned to rapidly expand its power, perhaps more so than ever before.
Sessions has cracked down on immigration and has often spewed the deliberately misleading rhetoric of the Trump administration which has linked illegal immigration to massive spikes in crime. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement arrests have risen over at least 40 percent since Trump took office.
GEO Group is the the largest private prison company, and private immigrant detention-center operator second to CoreCivic, formerly the Corrections Corporation of America. "In the past 20 years, the two companies have made over $12 billion in profits, largely from immigrant detention," according to The Nation.
The Nation elaborated on the conditions of immigration detention centers:
Christina Fialho, the executive director of CIVIC and a leading advocate for detainee rights, says that “denial of medical care at immigration-detention facilities is routine.” This substandard medical care is often accompanied by substandard food, unsanitary water, and generally unhygienic living conditions.
Fialho says that immigrant-detention centers are also plagued by abuse. “Guards with little to no training are kicking, hitting, sexually assaulting people in immigration detention,” she says. Each year thousands of complaints alleging sexual and physical abuse and substandard medical care are filed with authorities, but very few cases are ever investigated.
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