Eager to reopen private prisons, company is in talks to hold ICE detainees in NC
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- GEO Group is in talks with Trump Administration to possibly reopen Rivers Correctional in NC.
- Past documented issues at Rivers include civil rights violations and contraband smuggling.
- Reactivation could add 1,000+ immigration beds amid increased detention efforts.
The company that owns a private prison in Eastern North Carolina is talking with the Trump Administration about a contract to hold U.S. immigration detainees after wanting to reopen the prison for years.
The GEO Group, which owns the Rivers Correctional Institution in Winton, is discussing potential ways for ICE and the U.S. Marshals Service to use the facility, according to an August investor call transcript, first reported by Down from DC.
The company has been discussing possibly using its prisons for that very purpose since the federal government decided not to extend its contract in 2020, according to investor call transcripts reviewed by The News & Observer.
Rivers is one of three facilities owned by GEO Group that did not receive contract renewals in 2020. At the time, The Biden Administration issued an executive order citing the problem of “mass incarceration” and noted it wanted to reduce the financial incentive to put people in prison for profit.
When GEO Group investors pressed for answers on the future of the facility during a February 2021 call, the company’s executives said they would market the facilities to other correctional agencies at the federal, state and local levels.
If the prison reopens, it will do so with a record of some problems during its former contract with the U.S. government. Over two decades, correctional officers working at the prison were charged with civil rights violations, smuggling in contraband and falsifying records that ultimately prevented an inmate from gaining parole.
The Department of Justice also found Rivers had high numbers of inmate-on-inmate sexual assault, positive drug tests and inmate grievances, according to a 2016 review of federal contract prisons.
The possible reopening of the facility could put more than 1,000 additional beds at the disposal of federal immigration officials at a time when the Trump Administration is ramping up detention and deportations of undocumented residents across the country.
Officials in Hertford County where the Rivers prison is located did not immediately respond to The N&O’s questions about whether they were part of GEO’s discussion to reopen the prison – or whether they had concerns about a possible new federal contract.
GEO Group also did not immediately respond to The N&O’s questions about its plans to partner with federal immigration officials.
The GEO Group
The GEO Group started in the mid-1980s and has since built an international business in the corrections industry, according to its website.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) utilizes 20,000 beds at 21 of the company’s facilities, with room to grow that number to 25,000.
“We also have approximately 5,900 idle beds at six company owned facilities which remain available,” George Zoley, executive chairman of GEO Group’s board, said in the August investor call.
That includes facilities in New Mexico, Colorado, California, Texas – and the Rivers prison. If all six facilities being eyed for another federal contract are utilized, executives told their investors, it could net the company around $310,000,000 in annual revenue.
By the time GEO lost its federal contract, company executives were already figuring out how to get the prison back up and running.
“We expect to market the Rivers Correctional Facility to other federal and state agencies,” Zoley said in a 2020 press release.
And earlier this year, GEO executives again highlighted the potential for another contract with federal agencies to their investors.
“They’re all high security facilities, which is very much of an interest to ICE,” Wayne Calabrese, a former GEO Group executive, said in an investor call earlier this year. “I think they’re in high demand at this time.”
Years of trouble at Rivers prison
Over 200 acres in rural Winton, North Carolina are dedicated to the Rivers Correctional Institution.
The prison has mostly held immigration detainees since 2001, but was one contract prison that had an exception to hold inmates from Washington, D.C.
It wasn’t long before issues arose at the Rivers prison. Two correctional officers were caught participating in a 2003 scheme to plant evidence in an inmate’s cell, ultimately causing him to serve an extra nine months in prison, according to a 2007 DOJ press release.
Officers Eula James and Molly Holley plead guilty to the conspiracy in 2007 and were sentenced to a year and nine months in prison, respectively.
At least two officers were sentenced with prison time and another with probation for their role in beating a restrained inmate to punish him for “an earlier verbal altercation” in 2006, according to a DOJ press release.
Shortly after the officers “conspired with other officers to compose and submit false use of force reports to conceal the attack,” a 2008 press release said. The officers later gave false statements to DOJ special agents in an attempt to cover up the assault.
A DOJ report found that between 2011 and 2014 32% of substantiated inmate-on-inmate sexual misconduct cases in 14 prisons it reviewed occurred at the Rivers prison.
The same report found that Rivers prison had the highest rates of contraband, inmate assaults on staff, uses of force, inmate grievances, positive drug tests and the lowest phone monitoring rate.
And in 2020, a year before the prison’s federal contract was set to expire, The N&O reported Rivers was one prison that hadn’t reported COVID-19 cases to the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ infection and death reports.
The data didn’t include private prisons and officials didn’t share why at the time. A law professor told The N&O at the time that the lack of reporting was “just another example of dereliction of duty.”
The federal government started reporting coronavirus cases at private prisons holding federal inmates two days after The N&O published its investigation into the issue.
This story was originally published September 9, 2025 at 3:55 PM with the headline "Eager to reopen private prisons, company is in talks to hold ICE detainees in NC."
