Private prisons are cashing in on ICE detainees.
Trump’s policies are a boon for business and campaign donations
Billy McConnell was attending the grand opening for a Louisiana prison in 1997 when a local sheriff mentioned he’d like a new jail but didn’t want to run it. McConnell saw money at that moment.
He co-founded LaSalle Corrections and began cutting deals to build and operate jails in rural towns across the South. But then states throughout the U.S., including McConnell’s home state of Louisiana, started reducing inmate populations to save money.
That’s when President Donald Trump swept into office, promising to crack down on illegal immigration. McConnell saw his next big opening: the business of immigration detention. His detention centers now hold more than 7,000 immigration detainees.
McConnell is aware of critics who condemn the rapidly growing use of jails and prisons to detain immigrants – many of them asylum-seekers – whose detention and proceedings are supposed to be civil in nature, not criminal.
“What somebody else thinks about Billy McConnell compared with what God thinks of Billy McConnell is almost irrelevant,” he said, noting he carries a crucifix at all times and ministers to detainees locked inside detention centers. “We don’t arrest ’em. We don’t try ’em. I know what the laws on the books say, and I’m a guy who goes by the rules.”
The use of private prisons to detain immigrants is not new. But the business has exploded under Trump, with at least 24 new immigration detention centers and more than 17,000 new beds added in the past three years to the sprawling detention system run by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
A USA TODAY Network investigation found the companies operating those centers have generated record-setting revenue since 2016 while making record-setting political donations – primarily to Republicans, including Trump – as key political figures moved freely between government policy roles and jobs in the private immigration industry. The booming business spends $3 billion a year housing a record high of roughly 50,000 people, the majority of whom have no criminal record.
Reporters interviewed 35 current or former detainees and reviewed hundreds of documents from lawsuits, financial records and government contracts, and toured seven ICE facilities from Colorado to Texas to Florida. They found that private prison companies have established close ties with officials from the very top of the federal government down to the local level.
‘This is their moment’
The private prison industry set highs for federal campaign contributions in the 2016 presidential election cycle, spending more than $1.7 million and again in 2018 by spending more than $1.9 million. Most of the money went to Republican causes, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics and the Federal Election Commission.
Trump has received more than 25 times the amount of contributions as President Barack Obama received over eight years in office – $969,000 to Trump, $38,000 to Obama. The industry also has donated to people inside Trump’s inner circle, including Vice President Mike Pence, former Energy Secretary Rick Perry and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley while each was serving as governor of their home states.
Private prison companies spent millions more in federal lobbying efforts and hired people in Trump’s orbit, including former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, who now works at the White House, and Brian Ballard, Trump’s former campaign finance chief in Florida.
“This is their moment,” said Silky Shah, executive director of the Detention Watch Network, which advocates against detaining migrants. “They’re thinking, ‘We don’t know how long Trump is going to be in office, so let’s get all the money to him and to Republicans and solidify ourselves.’ ”
The White House declined to comment on its ties to the private prison industry.
David Venturella, senior vice president of client relations at GEO Group, one of the two largest companies detaining immigrants, said his industry faces heightened criticism because of a hyper-politicized climate and opposition to the president.
“From our perspective, we’re providing a service to the federal government to help them meet their needs and carry out their mission,” Venturella said.
The biggest players
Five companies – GEO Group, CoreCivic, LaSalle Corrections, Management & Training Corporation and Immigration Centers of America – own and operate the largest ICE detention centers in the country. The giants in the field – GEO Group and CoreCivic – have operated private prisons for more than 35 years and manage 41 facilities that hold more than half of all ICE detainees.
Since the 1990 election, for-profit prisons, their political action committees and employees have given $9.5 million to candidates and the groups that support them, according to a USA TODAY Network analysis of data from the Federal Election Commission and the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. Over that time, 78% of that money backed Republican candidates or causes.
GEO Group and CoreCivic each donated $250,000 to Trump’s inaugural committee. GEO Group gave another $225,000 to a super PAC that supported Trump. And GEO Group’s PAC and its CEO gave a combined $225,000 to Trump Victory, which collects money and distributes it among the Trump campaign and other Republican efforts.
In August 2018, Trump held a meeting to discuss prison reform and reentry issues, “and other subjects,” according to the president’s remarks at the event. Guests included five governors and two state attorneys general – all but one of whom had received donations from the private prison industry in their state elections, according to data compiled by the nonpartisan National Institute on Money in Politics.
Those include former Republican Gov. Matt Bevin of Kentucky ($2,000), Republican Gov. Phil Bryant of Mississippi ($6,000), former Republican Gov. Nathan Deal of Georgia ($78,000), Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards of Louisiana ($13,500), former Republican Florida Attorney General Bondi ($2,000) and Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton ($15,000), according to the national institute.
“It’s easy to see how they’ve been making money off this investment,” said Jordan Libowitz of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
In 2018, GEO Group paid a total of $4.3 million to state and federal lobbyists, according to the company’s political engagement report.
In 2017, the GEO Group tapped a firm founded by Ballard to lobby on its behalf in Washington. Ballard ran the Trump campaign’s Florida financing strategy, chaired Trump’s joint fundraising committee and was the finance vice chairman on Trump’s inaugural committee. Florida lobbying records show Ballard has represented the GEO Group on the state level from 2011 to 2013 and again in 2019.
Next came Bondi, the former Florida attorney general who also represented the GEO Group for Ballard Partners. Bondi now works for the White House.
In Louisiana, Scott Sutterfield left his position in September as acting director of ICE’s field office in New Orleans and became an executive at LaSalle Corrections. Sutterfield said he recused himself from decisions involving LaSalle before applying for the new job.
When asked whether Sutterfield had made decisions affecting LaSalle’s business while working for ICE, Kevin Sumrall, the company’s director of operations, said: “Not extremely a lot.”
In the past two decades, the industry has given at least $13 million to Republican state candidates and state political committees, according to a USA TODAY Network analysis of data compiled by the National Institute on Money in Politics.
Those contributions have gone to state officials with close ties to Trump.
Pence received about $36,000 from the industry for his 2016 campaign, and he and his running mate got another $33,000 in 2012, according to the data.
Perry, the former governor of Texas and Trump’s former energy secretary, received at least $59,000 during campaigns between 1998 and 2010, according to data compiled by the National Institute
on Money in Politics.
And before Trump named her ambassador to the United Nations in 2016, Haley received at least $23,000 for her successful campaigns for governor of South Carolina in 2010 and 2014, according to the institute’s data.
A boom for rural America
In Adams County, Mississippi, the median household income is $30,359, less than half the national average, according to U.S. Census data. That partly explains why leaders embrace the Adams County Correctional Center, owned by CoreCivic.
The facility is the largest taxpayer in the county, generating more than $1.8 million in real and personal property taxes, said Joe Murray, Adams County Administrator.
Mike Lazarus, a county supervisor, said the county hasn’t raised taxes for 12 years because of the detention center.
But some communities are fighting back against ICE.
Officials in Hudson County, New Jersey, tired of the controversy surrounding their agreement to hold ICE detainees in their correctional facility, announced it would end its relationship with ICE by next year.
California passed a series of laws that go into effect in January that aim to ban all ICE detention centers in the state. Washington state lawmakers are working on a similar bill.
Paying for Little League
The Adelanto ICE Processing Center, 85 miles northeast of Los Angeles in the Mojave Desert, provides 760 jobs for local residents, is the largest property taxpayer in the city and pays an estimated $38 million in economic benefits to Adelanto, according to city manager Jessie Flores.
That helps explain why city leaders have worked closely with the GEO Group, the company that runs Adelanto.
Up until this year, the city held the contract with ICE to house detainees, but then it contracted the work out to GEO Group. Over the past year, city leaders appear to have coordinated closely with GEO leadership to devise a new setup: The city would back out of its contract with ICE, and then GEO would sign its own standalone contract with ICE that could run for up to 15 years.
The facility can then continue to operate despite the new state laws.
Emails obtained through a public records request show how closely all sides worked together.
In a Feb. 5 email to Greg Hillers, GEO Group’s assistant warden of finance and administration, Flores called a recent meeting with GEO Group CEO Zoley “productive,” then requested $3,500 for the Adelanto Little League.
“The league is in desperate need of equipment such as Uniforms, Baseball bats, Ground maintenance, Park usage fees, Utilities, etc…” Flores wrote. “Your continued support and consideration is very much appreciated.”