BI Incorporated has earned more than half-billion dollars from ICE

Near Gunbarrel Avenue in Boulder, across the street from an apartment complex, sits a drab office building. Behind the office is a loading dock. To the side, a volleyball court.

There’s little to distinguish this building from the offices of the medical device manufacturers and LED flashlight makers that also occupy the north Boulder business park.

And there’s little to suggest that this nondescript office is home to a company that has received hundreds of millions of dollars from a government agency that has come under heavy fire recently from politicians and activists critical of the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

The building is home to BI Incorporated, a Boulder company founded in 1978 as a cattle-monitoring service. In the decades since, the company’s diversified operations have expanded to include the management of a major program on behalf of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

In addition to manufacturing alcohol-detecting breathalyzers and ankle bracelets with GPS trackers, BI Incorporated runs ICE’s Intensive Supervision Appearance Program. That program, which has been renewed twice since it was launched in 2005, bills itself as an alternative to detention for people awaiting immigration proceedings or deportation.

In exchange for managing the program, BI Incorporated — a subsidiary of the giant Floridabased private prison firm The Geo Group — has been handsomely compensated.

Since 2004 — the year after ICE was created — the agency has awarded BI Incorporated with contracts worth more than half a billion dollars, according to data from usaspending.gov. That includes a single contract award worth more than $107 million to provide support for the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program through August 2019.

The program “employs a comprehensive case management system and location monitoring systems to facilitate attendance at all immigration hearings and compliance with final court orders,” according to BI Incorporated’s website. The program utilizes electronic-monitoring devices such as GPS-enabled ankle bracelets.

Representatives for BI Incorporated and ICE did not respond to requests for comment.

BI Incorporated was purchased by The Geo Group — which operates the Aurora ICE Processing Center, along with dozens of other detention facilities across the country — in 2010 for $415 million in cash.

Some have raised concerns about The Geo Group’s dual roles in both detaining people and managing undetained people awaiting processing.

“Geo Group has ensured that whether ICE is expanding detention or expanding alternatives to detention, they’re getting paid,” said Sharita Gruberg, an associate director with Washington-based policy institute Center for American Progress.

The Geo Group posted revenues of nearly $565 million for the first quarter of fiscal year 2018.