South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
‘Orange is the New Black’ creators researched GEO detention center for show
Popular TV series “Orange is the New Black” turned to one of Geo Group’s detained immigrant processing centers to do research for its final season airing now on Netflix.
Boca Raton-based Geo, which operates prison and immigrant detention facilities across the country, had its center in Adelanto, Calif., visited by the show’s production team about a year ago as it was writing the sixth and seventh seasons of the show. The final season depicts the heartbreaking situations of immigrant detainees in a center who are desperately trying to reach family and seek legal help.
The series is drawn from the
memoir of Piper Kerman, who spent 13 months in prison after pleading guilty to money-laundering and drug trafficking convictions and wrote a book about her prison experience. The show features several fictional characters in prison and later some in a detention center, delivering drama and comedy.
Carolina Paiz, executive producer for “Orange is the New Black,” wrote a column for news site BuzzFeed, describing how the production crew was surprised to get permission to tour the center. “I guess nobody at ICE bothered to Google “Jenji Kohan,” she wrote, referring to the creator and executive producer of the series that focuses on women in prison.
Geo has been under the spotlight by more than a TV series. It also is one of the detention operators being investigated by a Congressional committee for a “troubling series of reports of health and safety violations.”
In a recent earnings conference call, Chairman and CEO George Zoley said the company is cooperating with the committee, as well as requests for information from Democratic presidential contender Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Geo didn’t sanction the tour by the show’s production crew. “GEO plays no role in approving facility visits/tours,” said Geo spokesman Pablo Paez. “Those decisions are made by ICE.”
Geo also said it is embarking on its largest expansion for ICE yet: contracts for an additional
5,700 beds for detainees in the second half of the year. The new contracts will add $100 million in yearly revenue to Geo’s coffers. Geo posted $2.33 billion in
2018 revenues, up from
$2.26 billion a year earlier. And in Boca Raton, Geo also recently opened a new $57 million headquarters with new amenities for its more than 400 workers there.
Kohan came up with the idea to extend the story to an ICE center soon after Donald Trump became president and began a crackdown on illegal immigration, according to her associate Paiz.
“Watching the subsequent expansion of detention centers, and the boom in the stock price of private prison operators, only strengthened our resolve,” Paiz writes.
Paiz described how after the tour, the producers were able to talk with some detainees: “Men and women line up to speak with us, asking us to call their mothers, wives, sons. To tell them they’re in here.
That they’re OK. That they’re not OK. To help them find an attorney. To help them.”
Paiz said what the crew saw their visit inspired an important part of the final season. “But it also changed us,” she wrote. “While we came in with wildly differing opinions on immigration, we all left stunned by what we’d witnessed, agreeing that it didn’t stand for our American values.”
Geo spokesman Paez said, “while we had no involvement in the approval process for the tour of the Adelanto ICE Processing Center by the Hollywood TV producers of ‘Orange is the New Black,’ we strongly refute the characterizations made in the guest op-ed published by BuzzFeed.”
In the final season, main character “Piper Chapman” has been released from prison and struggles to adjust to life outside. The show moves in part to an ICE processing center, as some prisoners are recruited to cook for detainees.
But they surreptitiously also work to help the detainees get in touch with family and lawyers.
In the show, detainees, some who previously were prisoners shown in previous seasons, suddenly disappear as their asylum requests are rejected and they are deported, even those who have children in the U.S.
Zoley told some Wall Street analysts, who expressed concern about a backlash from media and government reports, that Geo’s detention centers are modern and air-conditioned, many sporting big TVs and soccer fields. “The residents are provided with hot meals, clothing, 24⁄7 access to health care services and full access to telephones and legal services,” the CEO said.
Geo’s mistreatment of detainees at the nearly
2,000-bed Adelanto and three other detention centers is described in a 2018 report by the Inspector General’s Office of the Department of Homeland Security. The Inspector General made unannounced inspections in November
2018 and found spoiled food, moldy bathrooms, and limited recreation for detainees.
Geo has said those issues have since been resolved. The company is one of the top private prison and detention center operators in the world, with government contracts for detention centers, prisons, electronic monitoring and rehabilitation services.
In South Florida, Geo operates the Broward Transitional Center, a detention center in Deerfield Beach, and the South Bay Correctional and Rehabilitation Facility, a prison in South Bay.
Geo spokesman Paez said that instead of believing a “Hollywood producer’s account,” people should watch a video report by Fox News, which was given “an exclusive” tour of Adelanto.
The Fox report “validates the fact that Geo’s ICE processing centers provide safe and humane care and our employees treat everyone in our care with respect and dignity,” Paez said.