#geo group

CoreCivic’s revenue from contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) skyrocketed in 2025, but some participants on today’s quarterly earnings call expressed concerns that ICE had not detained as many immigrants as investors hoped.

“One of the big questions…has been the pace of detention by ICE, that it’s been below what investors thought [it] was going to be,” one caller said. “I think people thought we’d be at that 100,000 level. We’re at a little over 70,000.”

In February 2025 the administration signed a 15-year, $1 billion contract with the GEO Group, which operates private prisons, to expand the Delaney Hall facility dramatically as an ICE prison. New Jersey officials have argued in federal court that GEO Group does not have the required permits to operate the expanded facility, yet the facility opened about a year ago.

In February, twenty-five detainees at Delaney Hall signed a letter distributed by the national advocacy group for undocumented immigrants, Cosecha, as “Our Cry: A Letter from Inside Delaney Hall.” In the letter, they apologized “for the way we entered the United States,” explaining that “we were experiencing safety circumstances that endangered our lives and the lives of some members of our family.” They emphasized that they had surrendered to border authorities and continued to work within the system, attending check-ins, getting work permits, and paying taxes, before being seized by ICE agents.

They explained that they have not been afforded the legal hearings guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and are being pressured to self-deport under threats of being sent not back to their country of origin, but rather to third countries like Uganda. They noted that ICE agents have arrested children, the elderly, and people with medical issues and that the facility is overcrowded.

[See more under the cut.]

Jay Kuo at The Big Picture:

A federal appeals court in Texas just handed immigration authorities the power to lock people up indefinitely. In Buenrostro-Mendez v. Bondi, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that the government may hold immigrants in ICE detention without ever providing a bond hearing. In practical terms, tens of thousands can now be jailed for months or even years while their cases wind through the system, with no judge deciding whether continued confinement is necessary.

This is an extreme ruling by two extremist jurists, the most radical pair of judges on the Fifth Circuit, Edith H. Jones and Kyle Duncan. But it does not arrive in a vacuum. The decision adds a legal imprimatur on existing ICE detention centers—really, concentration camps—that routinely fail to provide basic human needs, adequate medical care or timely case resolution. Once indefinite detention is stacked on top of this, the human misery and civil rights violations will skyrocket.

What the case held

In Buenrostro-Mendez, two members of a Fifth Circuit panel accepted the government’s argument that immigrants can be detained without any opportunity for a bond hearing, based solely on how they are classified under immigration law. Under their erroneous interpretation of the law, someone who crossed the border years ago, built a life here and was later arrested may be treated just like someone stopped at the border yesterday. That’s because both supposedly are “seeking admission” to the U.S., and therefore both can be held without bond. That is a devastating conclusion. Bond hearings are one of the few remaining pressure points in an overburdened immigration system. Cases often take months or years to resolve. And while a bond hearing does not guarantee release, it requires the government to explain to a judge why continued detention is justified. As Georgetown law professor Steve Vladeck explained, the idea that the government may simply detain people indefinitely without bond is an “extreme minority view.” Indeed, as Kyle Cheney of Politico reported, “[A]t least 360 judges rejected the expanded detention strategy—in more than 3,000 cases—while just 27 backed it in about 130 cases.”

Other jurisdictions have encountered this very issue and soundly rejected the government’s flawed “seeking admission” argument. The advancement of that argument even caused a backlog of cases in Minneapolis, leading Chief Judge Patrick J. Schiltz to accuse ICE of violating nearly 100 court orders requiring the release of individuals the government was purporting to hold under this strained interpretation. Judge Schiltz wrote, “This Court recently held that, because such aliens are not ‘seeking admission’ [as required under the mandatory detention law], that provision does not apply to them,” citing his own decision of November 25, 2025.

“Seeking admission” explained

With the government relying so much on these two words to indefinitely hold tens of thousands of people, the question is worth unpacking. The government’s position—now adopted by the Fifth Circuit—is that anyone who entered the country without formal permission is always “seeking admission,” even years later and even when arrested far from the border. Under this theory, such individuals are treated as if they are perpetually standing at the border.

Many judges have explained why that just doesn’t fly. District Court Judge Dale Ho of the Southern District of New York summed it up best using a simple analogy: Someone who sneaks into a movie theater and sits down would not ordinarily be described later as “seeking admission” to the theater. Such persons are already in. They are seeking to remain. Judge Lewis Kaplan of the SDNY likewise concluded that the government’s interpretation ignored the structure of the statute and collapsed distinctions Congress deliberately created.

[...]

ICE will capitalize on the decision

Even if the decision is ultimately overturned, it could remain binding law in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi for months or longer. These states already house a significant share of the nation’s detention facilities. But it gets worse. As Professor Vladeck noted, the way the law gets interpreted affects whether detainees receive individualized review, whether they are transferred between facilities, and how long they remain in custody without judicial oversight. Importantly, detention challenges generally must be filed where a person is currently being held. That means ICE can also influence which law applies by deciding where to detain people. Advocates have long warned that this creates incentives to transfer detainees into Fifth Circuit states, where bond hearings are now harder to obtain. We are seeing that happen already.

[...]

Overcrowded, unsanitary and dangerous conditions

In many ICE facilities, the number of detainees is creating severe overcrowding without any apparent plan to alleviate it. A former worker at an ICE detention facility in Baltimore described inhumane conditions there. “I worked there for several months and it was probably day one, day two that I saw the abuse,” the whistleblower said, speaking to CBS News affiliate WUSA9 through an anonymizing voice filter. “I saw people laying in feces. People throwing up, people laying in urine.” The former employee provided internal ICE headcount sheets from December showing 47, 50 and 56 detainees in the same cell and as many as 50 in an even smaller cell.

[...]

Lack of adequate medical care

Across ICE facilities, detainees have also reported long delays in receiving medical attention. Journalists have documented cases in which individuals were told to wait or self-treat until symptoms worsened. In some instances, people were hospitalized only after collapsing. Mother Jones shockingly reported that ICE has not paid third-party providers for medical care since October 2025 and has no mechanism to provide prenatal care. Reporting by the Nevada Independent highlighted this lack of prenatal care for pregnant women at the Henderson Detention Center. Emine Ş—an asylum seeker from Turkey who was legally in this country at the time she was detained—spent the first few months of her high-risk pregnancy incarcerated there with no prenatal care whatsoever. She was only released following the paper’s reporting.

[...]

The detention industrial complex

There’s another disturbing facet to all this we shouldn’t overlook. Immigration detention has quickly become a big business operated by a few key private contractors. For example, GEO Group and CoreCivic manage many ICE facilities. In public filings, both describe immigration detention as a major source of revenue. These management contracts are generally structured around per-diem payments, often with guaranteed minimums. As a result, revenue depends in significant part on occupancy levels and average length of detention. That creates a perverse incentive to house more people for longer, all so these contractors can charge the government more money.

A 3-judge panel on the ultra-right 5th Circuit Court ruled in Buenrostro-Mendez v. Bondi that permits the government to hold immigrants in ICE detention without ever providing a bond hearing, perhaps for years. This ruling is an abject disaster for human rights.

See Also:

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

June 2, 2026

Heather Cox Richardson

Jun 03, 2026

Officials in the Trump administration have worked hard to restrict the access of members of Congress to the detention centers it has established across the country. Although lawmakers have a constitutional duty to oversee executive agencies and courts have reiterated their authority to conduct unannounced visits to federal immigration facilities, officials have repeatedly tried to limit that access.

Last May they went so far as to arrest Mayor Ras Baraka of Newark, New Jersey, for trespassing after he waited inside the gate of the privately operated Delaney Hall detention center where a staffer had asked him to stand after he accompanied three members of Congress to Delaney Hall, and then stepped outside when asked to leave. After they dropped the charges against Baraka days later, they charged Representative LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) with assault for her actions during a skirmish that broke out when immigration agents arrested Baraka.

On May 11, 2026, Todd Lyons, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), tried again, issuing a memo that calls congressional visits “disruptive” and saying ICE will facilitate meetings of lawmakers with people in detention only if the lawmaker can specifically identify the individual in detention and provide “valid proof” that the detainee consents to a visit. Any such visit, they said, will require two days’ advance notice.

On May 22, after writing public letters to call attention to the crowded and unsanitary conditions inside Delaney Hall, the largest detention center in the Northeast, about 300 detainees began a hunger strike to demand the immediate release of young, elderly, and medically vulnerable detainees and to bring attention to the fact that immigration judges are ignoring their cases, leaving them incarcerated.

While much of the protest focuses on the horrific conditions inside the facility, the detainees themselves have focused on their lack of access to the legal system. They wrote: “We see with deep helplessness and frustration that our due process, rights, and defense have been violated, disregarding benefits granted under the 4th, 5th, and 6th Amendments of the UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION.”

“We are certain that we are not being processed equally under immigration laws and the Constitution….. We have seen judges in this detention center who are ready to carry out deportations and mass expulsions without properly reviewing cases. We live with anguish and fear of appearing in court. We are witnessing how judges are disregarding decisions of federal judges, for example not honoring HABEAS CORPUS rulings decided by a FEDERAL judge, depriving us of our liberty.”

They asked for help from senators and members of Congress and said, “[W]e trust in God and believe that justice will be done under the law of the United States of America, since it is a sovereign and constitutional country respected worldwide for upholding human rights.”

Since the Delaney Hall detainees began their strike, supporters outside have gathered to show support. Federal agents have clashed with them repeatedly, pepper-spraying Senator Andy Kim (D-NJ) among others. MAGA activists went to the site to counter-protest, and Mayor Baraka established a curfew near the facility. Late last week, Governor Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat, deployed New Jersey state troopers after White House advisor Tom Homan—a former consultant for Delaney Hall operator GEO Group—threatened to send “tactical units” to New Jersey if the situation continued. The troopers arrested dozens of protesters.

Today New Jersey attorney general Jennifer Davenport sued the GEO Group for refusing to allow inspectors into the facility in violation of state law. “If the GEO Group—with a $1 billion government contract—has nothing to hide and the conditions inside Delaney Hall are as safe and as sanitary as this private corporation and the Trump Administration claim, then there is no legitimate reason why my health inspectors are being kept from full access throughout the building,” Sherrill said. “The people of New Jersey deserve transparency and accountability, and I will continue using all the power of this office to advocate for the detainees and their families.”

In a May 29 interview with me on American Conversations, Senator Kim said that “the detainees were actually very clear with me… they’re concerned about the conditions, but the main reason they’re pushing forward right now, on this hunger strike and broader protest, is about the lack of forward movement when it comes to their cases. I remember one of them ran out of the room when I was talking to them, to go grab a piece of paper off a bulletin board…. The paper, when they brought it back, was about the court docket for the following couple days. And it showed that…this past Tuesday, when the courts opened up after the holiday weekend, this one judge that they are put in front of has 74 cases before her in just that one day, just on Tuesday. She had 74 cases on her docket. You know, I did the…math. I mean, that’s roughly about five minutes per case, if that’s everything is perfectly aligned…. [I]t’s just a…farce. This is not actual justice. This is not actual… legal proceedings as per our Constitution, and as per our laws.”

The destruction of the rule of law in Delaney Hall is part of the Trump administration’s destruction of the rule of law across the United States. This morning, Trump announced he is appointing the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, William Pulte, to become the acting director of national intelligence in addition to his job at the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The director of national intelligence is the nation’s top intelligence official, and federal law requires that the director have “extensive national security expertise.” Pulte has none.

What he does have is willingness to use the power of the government to persecute Trump’s perceived political enemies. It was Pulte who came up with the scheme of going after Federal Reserve Board member Lisa Cook and New York attorney general Letitia James by accusing them of mortgage fraud. He also advocated investigating then–Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell for alleged overruns in the renovation of Federal Reserve buildings.

Today, under pressure from Senate Republicans who recognize that the optics of Trump’s $1.776 billion slush fund will hurt Republicans in the midterms and demanded the removal of that funding from the budget reconciliation measure they are working on to fund ICE and the Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Trump appears to have dropped that demand. But acting attorney general Todd Blanche told members of Congress today that he would not commit in writing not to proceed with the slush fund, and that the Department of Justice is not dropping the plan to provide Trump, his family, and the Trump Organization broad amnesty for any laws broken in past tax filings and a pass on future audits.

Just after midnight this morning, Trump posted that his criminal conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records and the civil fraud judgement against him in New York for manipulating his financial statements to get better tax and insurance rates be dismissed, saying he was “an innocent man who has been horribly treated.” As Sophie Brams of The Hill noted, he also called for criminal charges to be launched against New York attorney general James and Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, who brought the successful lawsuits.

Today the new secretary of homeland security, Markwayne Mullin, refused to assure a U.S. Senate Appropriations subcommittee that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) would follow court orders. Repeatedly, he told Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) that DHS “will never break the Constitution, and we’re not going to break the law.” But he refused to agree that they would follow court orders. “If we didn’t think courts were politicized, then I would probably be able to answer that,” Mullin said. “But we see courts over and over again that use their bench for their political opinion, not just the rule of law.”

Kyle Cheney of Politico reported last month that the Trump administration has lost nearly 10,400 court cases over DHS immigration detentions while prevailing in about 1,200. That translates to a 90% loss rate. More than 425 judges—an overwhelming majority of them—have decided against the administration. Cheney notes that even a majority of the judges Trump himself appointed have decided against the administration on immigration.

In February, then–DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin explained away the administration’s dismal record by saying that “many activist judges have attempted to thwart President Trump from fulfilling the American people’s mandate for mass deportations.”

But Judge Joseph R. Goodwin of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia wrote: “Antiseptic judicial rhetoric cannot do justice to what is happening. Across the interior of the United States, agents of the federal government—masked, anonymous, armed with military weapons, operating from unmarked vehicles, acting without warrants of any kind—are seizing persons for civil immigration violations and imprisoning them without any semblance of due process…. It is an assault on the constitutional order.”

Today, after Mullin wouldn’t agree to obey the courts, suggesting instead that “we’ll hold each other accountable” if ICE breaks the law, Senator Murphy said: “Listen, if you’re a Republican or Democrat on this committee, you should be really, really freaked out.”

Former Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino, who oversaw the operations during which federal agents shot and killed American citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti, joined white nationalist Jared Taylor at a conference of far-right activists and influencers in Portugal over the weekend. As Marion Solletty of Politico reported, in an interview before the conference, Bovino embraced the white nationalism of the Great Replacement theory that says white Europeans and white Americans are in a fight to save their civilization from Black and Brown people.

He claimed that of the 342 million people in the U.S.—he said there were 420 million—100 million are undocumented immigrants who must be removed. But, he added, “our main battle is not with undocumented immigrants or unassimilated immigrants: it is with the bureaucrats of the status quo and the timid politicians, determined to suspend action or wait for the next election cycle.”

“If there is inspiration gained from the U.S. Border Patrol model and method,” he said, “then fantastic.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN