GEO Group

ICE Dentention Facilities Run By GEO GROUP Amid Lawsuits

Posted on by Helena

The Wackenhut Group was formed in 1954 by former FBI Agent, George Wackenhut and three FBI partners; William Stanton, Kenneth Altschul, and Ed Dubois, Jr. to provide security services. Given its government ties, the company began working in cohort with the CIA and DEA including William Casey and Frank Carlucci. During the McCarthy era, Wackenhut claimed to have compiled ‘files’ on 4 million Americans accusing them of ‘communist activities’.

Clients included US Customs and Border Patrol. In 2003, they changed their name to the GEO Group and began operating prison systems. The GEO Group contracts with ICE running their detention centers.  August 13th, the Colorado AG sued the GEO Group for not observing a public health order regarding a detainee who tested positive for Tuberculosis.  The GEO Group claims the person was released from the detention facility with medication but refuses to identify the person.

February 2026, the GEO Group faced major scrutiny and a Supreme Court setback over allegations that it forced civil detainees at its Aurora, Colorado facility to perform janitorial work and daily maintenance for $1 a day or no pay under threat of solitary confinement. 

Colorado law states that unannounced health inspections by the public health authority every 3 months are necessary to monitor for human rights abuses.  The GEO Group has failed to comply with the Law and is suing Colorado claiming federal law supersedes the state and no inspections are permitted. But the GEO Group is NOT a federal agency, it is a contractor and publicly traded entity.

Activists and detainees have documented severe medical neglect, rotten food, and overcrowding inside facilities in New Jersey and the Aurora center in Colorado.  It recently lost a class action lawsuit filed in 2014 for ‘forced labor’.

Dr. George Zoley, founder and recently returned CEO of GEO Group took over the position when the previous CEO, David Donahue, abruptly left in March 2026 after replacing the previous CEO, Brian Evans, in 2024.  The GEO Group heavily financed the Trump campaigns and stands to gain significantly from Trump’s mass deportation agenda. Since Donahue left, the share price of GEO Group has risen 104%. It operates as a REIT.

Does the GEO Group still maintain files on target individuals who speak out against their policies and agenda? Do they surveil illegally? 

ICE: 

ICE has recently used its ‘administrative subpoena’ authority to demand social media platforms provide information on persons deemed nefarious given they make negative comments about ICE. These investigations are not of illegal immigrant accounts but every day American citizens who have committed no crime. Providing them with this information would be a crime because the agency does not have surveillance authority over every single American – their stated purpose and authority lies very specifically with illegal immigrants. ICE is operating outside US LAW.

The ICE detention facilities are being compared to the WWII internment camps set up to house the Japanese. 120,000 Japanese – 2/3rds of which were American citizens were rounded up, their assets abandoned and forfeited. Forcibly detained by an FDR EO in 1942. Armed guards, watch towers, barbed fencing, it was no different than East Berlin under the Soviets. There were no criminal charges, no rights, identity was the sole reasoning.  The same logic and rights employed by ICE today against legal Americans and legal green card holders.

It wasn’t until the Supreme Court ruled against the illegality of racial discrimination that the Japanese were freed in 1944. Left without jobs, money, homes, cars. Nothing. The attitude today is no different. “IF you haven’t done anything wrong, you have nothing to fear”.  Just ask the Ukrainian conscripts forcibly removed from their homes.  Just ask the East Berlin Germans.  And yet, here we are repeating mistakes in the name of ICE.

A very controversial arrest was made of a family of three who were outed by a former Iranian CIA operative, Masih Alinejad.  Their crime? The father’s mother was a spokesperson for the 1979 US Embassy in Iran captivity of 52 Americans during the height of the Iran Revolution wherein the Western Coup Leader, the Shah, fled and the Ayatollah came into power.  By and thru the sovereignty of The People.

Masih is well known for her pro-Jewish stance and her radical views of her own country.  She considers herself a ‘feminist’.  While her resume is relatively small, it is curious how she supports herself.  On record working for the US Agency For Global Media which includes Voice of America, she apparently writes a weekly blog. The Agency is nothing more than a propaganda tool of government intel. Alinejad wrote in her memoir that she got her start in journalism with the help of Marjan Sheikholeslami who embezzled $7.4 billion before fleeing to Canada in 2019, divorcing her husband and remarrying her accomplice. Not exactly a stellar resume line.

In 2022, three former Soviet members of the gang, Vor Zakone, were convicted of a murder-for-hire plot to assassinate Alinejad. Vor Zakone was formed from prisoners and persons thrown in gulags in the Soviet Union in the 1930’s.  After the Fall of the Soviet Union, the Vory Gang splintered with some joining the Russian Mafia. Some members are Jewish. Their main source of income is ‘money laundering’.

The Russian Mafia acts as a high-level, sophisticated service provider, broker, and intermediary.  Rarely do they venture into the US, even more rarely do they conduct assassinations.  The trial lasted only 2 weeks before convictions amidst no evidence to support any Iranian involvement despite media insistence.

Government Incentivizing Prisons and Detention Centers

Posted on by Helena

Remember last year, that long, long time ago that most of us have forgotten, when thousands of children attempting to immigrate into the US from Central America were put in detention centers? Remember?

Well guess what? They are all still there. And the facilities are crammed.

So, who is paying for this? We are.

You see, a privately held company holds most of the prison contracts with the Federal government and eleven states. GEO Group builds and manages prisons across the US. And they hold the keys to the ‘detention centers’ in Texas and Pennsylvania currently holding all these children and their moms.

With revenues well over $2billion, the CEO of the Group, George Zoley, was paid over $4million in compensation last year. He is considered the highest paid government contractor and they are continually awarded new contracts despite numerous lawsuits and citations for wretched conditions and death.

The charges filed include deplorable medical conditions, substandard care, nine deaths, under-staffing, and at a youth center housing 13-22 year olds there were brutal beatings, sexual attacks by prison guards, gang fights, rapes, denial of education and medical care, and overall negligence. There was one federal indictment in that case – the warden, William Grady Sims, resigned and served seven months in prison.

Despite numerous civil lawsuits and federal charges, they are still a major government contractor. Mandatory sentencing has produced a system of incentivized incarceration.  In addition, detainees at detention centers and prisoners are required to – work.  It’s called slave labor and it’s authorized by the government.

As incarceration has risen 500% over the past 30 years, the rise directly coincides with the founding of GEO, originally Wackenhut Corporation, in 1984. Incarceration has become a monetary incentive. But the states and the fed are in collusion with this in that their contract with these private prison companies include a clause that requires the state to maintain a 80-100% occupancy on the prison’s behalf! And GEO boasts a 95% occupancy rate. But it is worse. If the state doesn’t have enough prisoners to fill the private prisons, they still receive a guaranteed percentage of occupancy even for – empty cells. For example: if the prison is only filled to a 60% capacity, the prison will still receive the minimum guaranteed payment per person up to the 80%to 100% per the contractual agreement.

GEO is large and expanding. They have a number of subsidiaries including:

  1. GEO Care Inc – which, “provides correctional mental healthcare services and operating state psychiatric hospitals treating forensic and civil populations, including the current management of six adult residential treatment centers. GEO Care has established itself as the premier provider of mental health and residential treatment services.” But this subsidiary is also not without it’s history of problems: “unauthorized restraint and seclusion of patients, incomplete medical records, failure to show patient consent for medications and failure to report serious injuries to the state.” In 2012, three patients died, 2 from overdosing on medications and one from a scalding bathtub.
  2. GEO Transportation, Inc
  3. GEO UK
  4. GEO Australia

Incentivizing occupancy means that crimes not deserving of prison will nonetheless mandate an order from a judge. This undermines basic law. In Colorado state prisons were shut down due to low occupancy as crime fell. But the private prisons remain full.  Arizona boasts an over capacity of prisoners relative to prisons.

They have such a win-win that they have created their own production and no one can bring them down. It is estimated that ICE spends over $2billion per year – on detention centers alone.

So what happened to all those moms and children in the private detention centers run by GEO? Mothers are protesting, hunger strikes are ramping up, solitary confinement is not uncommon, and children are sick. Las Hieleras in Texas is a temporary holding where allegations of freezing temperatures are utilized to break the spirit of the detainee.

While immigration is certainly a problem that has seen no remediation, ethics are in question as these people become simply a piece of merchandise on which private enterprise profits.