DAILY TRIFECTA: GEO Group Gropes For Wall Street's Approval
Earnings beat-down
THE SET-UP: The folks at GEO Group were poised for a festive earnings season. According to their earnings call, the company reported “better-than-expected earnings for the second quarter of 2025, with earnings per share (EPS) reaching $0.22, surpassing forecasts of $0.17.” And they underlined that “earnings beat” by announcing a $300 billion buyback.
By the time the market closed GEO’s stock had shed nearly 12% on its way to a year-to-date low of $22.88.
Although their share price has lost 7.7% over the last seven months, some “analysts” see “potential upside” and set their price targets between $35 and $50.
That’s a far cry from the heady days after Trump recaptured the White House.
As the nation’s leading private prison company, GEO Group was ready to cash-in on its support for the president-elect and his promise to initiate the largest deportation program in human history.
On November 4th of last year, GEO’s stock was $14.18. During an earnings call just three days later, GEO projected a $400 million increase in annual revenue. GEO Group Executive Chairman George Zoley proclaimed, “The GEO Group was built for this unique moment in our . . . country’s history and the opportunities that it will bring.”
On January 17, 2025— just days before Trump’s inauguration—the stock hit a high of $35.35.
It’s been (mostly) downhill ever since.
That doesn’t mean GEO Group and its closest competitor CoreCivic are in jeopardy of going under. They’ve been down before. In fact, the stocks of both companies dipped below ten bucks when Biden won the White House in 2020. Faced with a second Federal-level attempt to phase out private prison contracts, the outlook was grim.
The first attempted phase-out by Obama had produced similar results … but Trump’s win in 2016 ended the phase-out and the industry rebounded. Just like it did in 2024.
But something happened on the way to GEO Group’s “unique moment” in history.
Yes, GEO Group and CoreCivic are scoring contracts and GEO Group will continue to benefit from a revolving door that sends it’s employees into and back out of government. But they are also dealing with an unfettered Trump and that means they have to compete with the likes of the Acquisition Logistics Company, a shadowy firm run out of a house in suburban Virginia. He, they or it got $1.26 billion to “build and operate a detention center in El Paso County, Texas.”
Then there’s Alligator Alcatraz in Florida. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem promotes it as the model for future detention centers around the country. Governor Ron DeSantis is pouring hundreds of millions into the de facto concentration camp, but GEO Group didn’t see a dime.
Meanwhile, a cool $78 million was awarded to Critical Response Strategies. And, as Bloomberg reported, they are far from alone:
The Alligator Alcatraz contractors include SLSCO Ltd., a Galveston, Texas-based construction firm that built parts of the first Trump administration’s border wall; Garner Environmental Services, a disaster-relief company that has worked with New York City on migrant care; Doodie Calls, a portable-toilet provider; and CDR Companies, which will run medical services and did some site preparation, according to the three people, who asked not to be identified discussing information that hasn’t been made public.
CDR confirmed that the company is working on the project but declined to comment further, citing nondisclosure agreements. Representatives of the other three companies didn’t respond to requests for comment for this article.
It’s that last bit that stands out.
The simple fact is that Trump’s mass deportation scheme is not that popular. People like ejecting violent criminals. But the rest of it … the abuses and excesses and indignities … are not a good look. Private prisons and the “Prison-Industrial Complex” have not been a good look since Americans reconsidered the wisdom of housing the world’s largest prison population. The tipping point came in 2010 when Michelle Alexander’s seminal book, “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,” forever tied private prisons with criminal injustice.
Frankly, GEO Group tacitly admits to the toxicity of their business model in their own press release announcing the earnings beat and buyback. In it, they characterized the company as…
…a leading provider of contracted support services for secure facilities, processing centers, and reentry centers, as well as enhanced in-custody rehabilitation, post-release support, and electronic monitoring programs…
A lot of euphemistic corporate-speak cannot hide the fact is that it’s the largest private prison operator in the United States. In fact, it used to be known as Wackenhut Corrections Corporation, which was one of the pioneers of prison privatization during the early days of the so-called “crack cocaine epidemic.” And they flourished throughout the incarceration spree that followed.
Yet, if you go to their website, their main pitch is that they are a “Global Leader in Evidence-Based Rehabilitation”! They tout their commitment to…
…providing leading, evidence-based rehabilitation programs to individuals while in-custody and post-release into the community through the GEO Continuum of Care®.
Nothing about mass detention or helping Trump deport tens of thousands of workers plucked from behind counters or off farms and construction sites.
Maybe that’s part of why investors responded to today’s earnings call with a resounding “no thanks.” It’s a toxic brand that’s banking on politically-dependent government contracts to do something millions of Americans don’t like.
I wouldn’t count out GEO Group yet, though. As today’s TRIFECTA shows, they’ve still got the revolving door and the promise of tagging human beings like livestock, and Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill included $45 billion for the deportation process. There is money to be had for GEO Group. But it was not enough to move Wall Street, even at a bargain price. - jp
TITLE: The former private prison exec behind ICE’s immigrant detention surge
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/08/01/ice-david-venturella-geo-immigration-detention/
EXCERPTS: Shortly after the election, newly named “border czar” Tom Homan approached an old friend and former colleague about helping him lead President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. But there was a problem: The friend, David Venturella, was just finishing a 12-year stint at private prison firm Geo Group, where securities filings show he was paid more than $6 million to run immigrant detention centers for the federal government.
A federal ethics rule generally bars government employees from working on contracts awarded to their former employers for one year. Homan and Venturella discussed how the hiring could also invite public criticism of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s close ties to Geo, its largest contractor, according to a person Venturella later briefed on the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
So rather than appoint Venturella to a high-profile post at ICE, the Department of Homeland Security hired him as a full-time adviser and granted him a waiver from the ethics rule, according to interviews and documents obtained by The Washington Post. The maneuver allowed him to avoid a potentially contentious Senate confirmation hearing and keep his name off public websites.
Venturella, 59, is now the No. 2 official overseeing the ICE division that manages contracts for immigrant detention centers, according to an organizational chart and a person briefed on his role, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal agency matters.
Venturella’s hiring highlights the revolving-door relationship between ICE and Geo, a Boca Raton, Florida-based conglomerate that has emerged as one of the leading players in Trump’s mass deportation agenda.
As Geo has grown to become ICE’s contractor of choice, the company has cultivated close ties to the ICE officials who write and oversee its contracts and offered some of them jobs after they left government.
Venturella was one of these officials: He was working as an assistant director at ICE when Geo recruited him in 2012 for a role overseeing business development, he said in a court deposition. He worked as a Geo executive until 2023 and as a paid consultant through Jan. 31 of this year, the company said in a filing.
Now in his third government stint, Venturella has deep relationships across the agency and an extensive knowledge of detention contracts that he has displayed in numerous court declarations and depositions. He earns a salary of $164,280, government records show — about one-eighth what he earned during a typical year as a top Geo executive.
At least six former ICE officials who left government over the past decade now work in senior leadership roles at Geo Group, according to LinkedIn profiles, government biographies and reporting by the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight.
TITLE: Private Prison Giant to Ramp Up Production of Ankle Monitors After ICE Announced Plan to Shackle 180,000 Immigrants: Report
https://www.latintimes.com/private-prison-giant-ramp-production-ankle-monitors-after-ice-announced-plan-shackle-180000-587918
EXCERPTS: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has instructed staff to significantly expand the use of GPS-enabled ankle monitors on migrants, a move with which prison contractor Geo Group, whose subsidiary BI Inc. operates the program, stands to profit considerably.
BI Inc., which began in the 1970s making tracking devices for livestock, now runs the entirety of ICE's immigrant-monitoring program. A one-year extension on BI's contract was recently granted without a competitive bidding process, cementing its position.
The agency's new directive could result in more than 180,000 immigrants under ICE's Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program being outfitted with tracking devices. Currently, just over 24,000 wear ankle monitors.
Each ATD participant generates approximately $3.70 in daily revenue, which could mean hundreds of millions in additional income for BI and its parent, Geo Group, if ankle monitoring expands as planned.
David Donahue, Geo's CEO, told investors in May the company is "very well positioned" to meet this opportunity and has ramped up production accordingly, preparing to potentially track millions of immigrants, as The Washington Post explains.
According to a June 9 memo reviewed by The Post, ICE directed staff to escalate individuals to ankle monitors "whenever possible." Exceptions would include pregnant women, who may be assigned wrist-worn devices instead. "If the alien is not being arrested at the time of reporting, escalate their supervision level to GPS ankle monitors," wrote Dawnisha M. Helland, acting assistant director overseeing non-detained immigrants.
Geo Group, the largest private prison operator in the U.S., has become a central player in the federal government's immigrant surveillance program through a range of digital tools that include facial recognition apps and smartwatches. A sprawling New York Times report published in April revealed how the company's technology is instrumental in tracking the daily movements of immigrants facing deportation.
At the time, NYT also found that the company received hundreds of millions of dollars in federal contracts to manage ATD, with more than 300,000 immigrants being enrolled in the program which costs the government roughly $4.20 per person per day—far less than the $150 daily cost of traditional detention.
Geo Group has longstanding ties to the Trump administration, including donating over $1.5 million to Trump's campaign and inaugural committee, as The Washington Post points out. Tom Homan, Trump's border czar, has ties with the company and even received more than $5,000 in consulting fees from GEO Care, a division of GEO Group, according to a federal ethics filing in May.
TITLE: Prison Corporation Forces Visitors to Delaney Hall to Wait 7 Hours in Life-Threatening Heat
https://documentedny.com/2025/08/06/prison-corporation-geo-group-delaney-hall-detention-visits-center-ice-heat/
Delaney Hall detention facility is surrounded by truck parking lots, warehouses and a correctional facility, with no stores nearby to buy water or food, and no restrooms or portable toilets. Situated in the “chemical corridor,” a desolate industrial area just outside Newark, New Jersey, the detention center, which last housed immigrant detainees in 2017 before reopening this [March], is operated by the largest private prison corporation in the world, the GEO Group, and can house up to 1,000 people.
Weeks after it reopened — without permits, certificates of occupancy, or inspections, according to the city of Newark — Mayor Ras Baraka tried to inspect Delaney Hall. He was arrested, while three members of New Jersey’s congressional delegation — Rep. LaMonica McIver, Rep. Rob Menendez Jr., and Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman — were blocked from carrying out their oversight duties to evaluate the treatment of detainees.
With a 1,196-bed capacity, Delaney Hall has faced accusations of mistreatment and negligence toward detainees. Four detainees escaped the facility on June 12 during a protest over inadequate food and conditions. The facility, which housed immigrants from 2011 to 2017, reopened in March after ICE awarded the GEO Group a $20 million contract, which the company projected would expand to over $100 million.
The current number of detainees at Delaney Hall is unknown. However, Guadalupe Ibarra, a Mexico-born DACA recipient, reported overcrowding in one unit. “They have people sharing a bed or having to sleep on the floor,” she said. “My husband says that they’re very overcrowded.”
A GEO Group spokesperson avoided specific questions about Delaney Hall but told Documented in an email that the corporation’s facilities provide “around-the-clock access to medical care” and “dietitian-approved meals.” He added: “Our facilities are never overcrowded.”
However, ”inhumane” treatment and systemic problems at GEO Group’s facilities, including accusations of physical abuse, retaliation against detainees who protested conditions, denial of adequate medical care, and violations of due process, have been well documented.
More than half of the visitors interviewed for this article said that their loved ones and friends in detention face health issues, often caused by poor quality food combined with a lack of proper care.