New for The Appeal: GEO Group CEO Calls Lawsuits Against ICE Detention Facilities “Unwarranted” and “Unconstitutional”
Private prison executive suggests federal government may buy detention facilities to circumvent state laws.
I published an extended version of my substack post on GEO Group in The Appeal. An excerpt of the story is below and the full story can be read at theappeal.org.
On GEO Group’s quarterly earnings call on Wednesday, CEO George Zoley called litigation against immigration jails “unprecedented” and “unconstitutional.”
“There’s been litigation regarding overseeing medical services, food services, general cleanliness, etc,” he said. “It’s really unprecedented [and] I believe it’s fundamentally unconstitutional.”
His remarks were first reported in the author’s substack, The Carceral Report.
Private prison companies GEO Group and CoreCivic have been accused of detaining people in inhumane conditions where people are allegedly brutalized, subjected to sleep deprivation, and denied medical care.
So far this year, 18 people have died in ICE custody, which puts the agency on pace to surpass the near-record number of deaths recorded for 2025, when 31 people died. According to data collected by lawyer and journalist Andrew Free, half of those deaths occurred in either CoreCivic or GEO Group run detention facilities.
Trump’s mass deportation campaign has meant millions of dollars in new contracts for GEO Group and CoreCivic. Zoley and former CoreCivic CEO Damon Hininger have each made political contributions totaling more than a million dollars, including donations to the Republican National Committee and to PACs affiliated with President Donald Trump, according to an investigation by The Appeal.
For the first quarter of 2026, GEO Group reported total revenues of $705.2 million, a 17 percent increase from the first quarter 2025. Despite the growing revenue, GEO Group is still carrying over a billion dollars in debt.
On Wednesday’s call, Zoley announced that the Trump administration was reconsidering its plan to convert warehouses into immigration jails, a proposal that has been met with widespread opposition and revulsion. On Wednesday’s call, Zoley said that “the warehouse project has been paused,” and that DHS is considering purchasing “turn-key” facilities that may be less “politically problematic.”
“I think they’re [DHS] starting to look at the price tags of each of the facilities and doing comparisons as to whether the existing turnkey facilities may be a better play, financially, operationally, so forth, than some of these other locations, which have been politically problematic,” he said. “All of the plans, I think, are being reviewed, assessed, and I’m sure they’ll come up with some reasonable conclusions.”
Zoley told participants that the federal government is considering buying “approximately 10 privately owned turn-key ICE [Immigrations and Customs Enforcement] processing centers.”
“We have been in discussions with ICE regarding the potential sale of multiple facilities,” Zoley said on the call.
This announcement prompted a participant to ask during the question and answer session: “Why do they want to own the facilities rather than contract with third parties?”
Zoley replied that if the federal government owns the facilities, “there are more protections from unwarranted litigation that infringes upon the activities of the ICE processing centers.”
“As some blue states are considering more active involvement in oversight of facilities, I think the logical solution to much of that is federal ownership of the facilities,” he continued.
If the federal government owns the buildings, it will “provide stronger credibility in the courts as to the Supremacy Clause in the Constitution,” and help establish that “states can only have very limited involvement in those policies and programs.” Under the Supremacy Clause, federal law takes precedence over state laws.
In March, The Lever reported that the federal government was considering buying detention facilities, but Zoley’s comments seem to be one of the first times that an industry executive has admitted that the motivation for the potential purchases is to circumvent state law.
Setareh Ghandehari, Advocacy Director at Detention Watch Network, told The Appeal in an email that Zoley’s comments reflect how “ICE is doing whatever it can to expand detention capacity without transparency, oversight or accountability.”
“ICE recognizes the changing tide of overwhelming public opposition to detention across the country, and therefore is trying to evade public scrutiny while continuing to carry out the administration’s mass detention and deportation agenda unchecked,” Ghandehari said.
Numerous states have laws on the books that protect incarcerated people’s rights. In April, Washington State asked a federal court to order GEO Group to allow health inspectors inside the Northwest ICE Processing Center, in accordance with state law that empowers investigators to conduct unannounced visits at private detention facilities.
Washington previously sued GEO Group for allegedly violating the state minimum wage law by paying detainee workers $1 a day. A federal jury agreed and ordered GEO Group to pay $23.2 million. GEO Group has appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.
More than a third of all ICE detainees are incarcerated in GEO Group facilities, although Zoley told call participants that the population had recently decreased. Nationally, as of April 4, there were about 60,000 people in ICE custody, the lowest number of people detained so far this year, according to the organization TRAC, which tracks immigration data.
About 21,000 people are detained in GEO Group’s ICE facilities, down from a high of 24,000 people earlier this year, Zoley said. He attributed the decline, in part, to the “recent transition in leadership at the Department of Homeland Security, and the 82-day partial government shutdown of DHS, resulting in lapse in annual appropriations for ICE.”
In addition to detention beds, ICE contracts with GEO Group for transportation and surveillance services, like electronic monitoring, under the company’s Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP.) The number of people on ISAP GPS monitors has more than doubled since the start of 2025, although the number of people on the program’s mobile app has declined, according to the company. There are currently more than 48,000 people on ISAP’s ankle monitors.
Read the full story at theappeal.org.