For owner of NC private prison, Trump immigration push is good for business
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- NC prison owner GEO Group expands business with Trump immigration push.
- With links to campaign donations and lobbying, GEO securing ICE contracts
- Reopening Rivers Correctional Institution could boost in Hertford County jobs
It’s been a good year for the corporate owner of a shuttered North Carolina prison that may reopen to aid the Trump administration’s push to remove undocumented immigrants in the country without legal authorization.
The GEO Group is in talks with Trump officials about reopening prisons, including the Rivers Correctional Institute in Hertford County.
It has already landed contracts to reopen a private prison in New Jersey and extend operation of another in Georgia, deals potentially worth in excess of $1 billion.
And the U.S. EPA dropped a complaint against GEO Group that alleged it misused disinfectant that can cause severe injury at a facility in California, eliminating the risk of fines that could top $4 million.
It’s a stark change from four years ago when the Biden administration moved to phase out federal private prison contracts, closing Rivers prison, among others.
There is evidence that GEO Group was well positioned for the transfer of power.
Its political action committee and employees contributed millions to mostly conservative political organizations and candidates last year, according to OpenSecrets, a group tracking money in politics. And it spent millions more on lobbying local, state and federal officials, according to the company’s 2024 political activity report.
At least two high-ranking Trump administration officials, including U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, had financial ties with GEO Group prior to taking their current roles — a fact that has raised concerns among some federal Democratic lawmakers.
The N&O reached out to GEO about its political donations, lobbying efforts and former financial ties with current Trump officials but did not receive a response.
GEO met with NC congressman after Trump victory
GEO Group, which operates private prisons in multiple countries, alerted at least one North Carolina elected official of its efforts to get back into the prison business here before President Donald Trump’s second term began in January.
GEO Group representatives met with U.S. Rep. Don Davis, who represents the district where the prison is located, in December 2024 about their efforts to reopen the facility, the congressman’s staff told The News & Observer.
While the company works on securing another federal contract to reopen Rivers prison — and other facilities like it — at least one Hertford County official said its success would be a welcome development.
“It would be nice if they would hurry up and do something,” Hertford County Commissioner Leroy Douglas told The N&O. “People will probably want to get back to work locally.”
The GEO Group under Trump administration
In 2021, President Joe Biden signed an executive order phasing out federal private prison contracts, which closed more than 1,000 beds at Rivers prison, citing a desire to reduce the financial incentive to put people in prison for profit.
The company has been trying to market its shuttered facilities to other corrections agencies since then, according to the company’s investor call transcripts, The N&O has reported.
Just over a month after Trump’s inauguration, ICE awarded the GEO Group a 15-year contract to hold its detainees in a 1,000-bed New Jersey prison. And in June, it modified an existing GEO Group contract to repurpose more than 1,800 beds in a Georgia prison facility. That should raise around $66 million “in incremental annualized revenues,” according to a press release to company investors.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued the now-dismissed complaint against the GEO-owned facility in California last year over chemicals used in the detention center. Workers were not given proper safety gloves while handling a disinfectant that can cause “irreversible eye damage and skin burns,” the EPA alleged in 2024.
The cleaning solution was applied over 1,000 times from March 2022 to around February 2023. GEO Group could have been on the hook for a more than $3,500 penalty — per violation, the agency said in the administrative complaint.
But the EPA dropped the complaint on June 6, with “no prejudice” and no explanation included in a public notice. Five days later, GEO received more good news: a U.S. District Court approved a settlement in a 2020 lawsuit focused on the same California facility. That allowed the company to immediately expand to its full, nearly 2,000-bed capacity. That population level could net the company around $31 million in revenue, according to a GEO Group press release from early June.
The lawsuit alleged GEO’s Adelanto facility at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic operated with crowded bunks, packed cafeteria tables and lack of access to personal protective gear. That was a “tinderbox scenario” leading to hundreds of possible COVID-19 cases within the prison, the lawsuit alleged.
Details of the settlement are sealed.
Democratic House members voice concern
Three Democratic U.S. House members last month complained in writing that GEO Group’s ties to the Trump administration have created an “increasing reliance” on the company by ICE and pose potential conflicts of interest.
Reps. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, Jasmine Crockett of Texas and Pramila Jayapal of Washington state sent a letter to Tom Homan, the Trump administration’s “border czar,” describing their concerns.
Homan is tasked with implementing federal immigration policy. The letter says his past work as a paid consultant for the private prison company raises “serious concerns about potential conflicts of interest.” The letter also says:
- Over the previous eight months GEO Group was awarded multiple government contracts, with one valued at over $1 billion, according to a GEO press release.
- The company may also benefit from ICE’s plan to sharply increase the number of immigrants it monitors using GPS-enabled ankle monitors. BI Inc., a GEO subsidiary, specializes in such technology.
- BI Inc. was recently granted a one-year extension to its GPS ankle monitoring program — which delayed bidding “that could have dislodged GEO Group’s control of the lucrative business.”
Bondi has also been criticized over her prior lobbying work with GEO. The company was poised to make hundreds of millions in profit under Trump’s plans to expand immigrant detention centers and deportations, Sen. Dick Durbin said during Bondi’s confirmation hearings earlier this year.
“Would you sense any conflict of interest if you’re asked to judge the performance of this government contractor?” Durbin asked.
Bondi said she would “consult with the career ethics officials” in the Department of Justice to make a decision one way or the other.
GEO invests in politics
GEO Group donated millions of dollars of political contributions through its subsidiaries, political action committee and employee contributions during the leadup to that year’s presidential election, according to the company’s 2024 political activity report.
The vast majority went to Republican candidates and conservative political committees, OpenSecrets reports. That includes a $1 million donation to Trump’s Make America Great Again Inc, and a $775,000 donation to the Congressional Leadership Fund.
The GEO Group has spent money on lobbying efforts too — $690,000 so far in 2025, according to OpenSecrets.
The company disclosed lobbying related to the federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act from between April and June of this year. The act was the basis of the EPA’s complaint against the company that was dropped earlier this year, according to an EPA document.
It lobbied around H.R. 1 — or the Trump administration’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” — which allocated $45 billion to federal immigration regulators to expand detention facilities across the country, according to the legislation.
It also is lobbying in connection with the 2026 Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, according to lobbying disclosures.
The bill would allocate close to $11 billion to ICE to prioritize immigrant detentions across the country and to ensure “non-detained” immigrants are placed in the Alternatives to Detention Program.
That requires “mandatory GPS monitoring throughout the duration of all applicable immigration proceedings (including any appeals) and until removal, if ordered,” according to the legislation.
The program runs off monitoring technology supplied by BI Inc., according to its website.
‘A major hit when they closed’
GEO Group executives have told shareholders during investor calls that marketing vacant facilities to other corrections agencies would put the company on a better financial track.
For some, the shuttered prison sitting on more than 250 rural acres is an issue that hits closer to home.
“They employed over 200 some people,” Douglas, the Hertford County commissioner and a Democrat, said. “It was a major hit when they closed.”
The prison also paid a large water bill to Winton, which the town couldn’t count on after the facility shuttered, according to Douglas.
GEO representatives visited Davis, the U.S. House member, in Washington, D.C., in late December, his communications staff confirmed to The N&O.
Since then Davis started touring immigration detention centers, including the Alamance County Detention Center facility in Graham, one in Lumpkin, Georgia, and Guantanamo Bay.
When asked if Davis had any concerns about the possibility of the company receiving contracts because of its political ties, a spokesperson said the topic didn’t come up in the meeting.
In a written statement, Davis said he is looking to better understand “the deportation process, including the detainees’ access to legal representation, the fairness of hearings, and the living conditions within detention facilities.”
This story was originally published September 19, 2025 at 5:00 AM with the headline "For owner of NC private prison, Trump immigration push is good for business."
