Private prison company GEO reports strong immigration business

The nation’s second largest private prison company, the GEO Group, reported strong immigration detention portfolios in its latest filing with the Securities Exchange Commission. GEO made headlines in the spring for buying the naming rights to a football stadium at Florida Atlantic University; after sustained pressure, the university turned down GEO’s offer.

The GEO Group operates “approximately 72,000 beds at 95 correctional and detention facilities, including projects under development, and also included the provision of monitoring of more than 70,000 offenders in a community-based environment on behalf of approximately 900 federal, state and local correctional agencies located in all 50 states” GEO Group, Inc., United States Securities and Exchange Commission, Form 10-Q, at 7 (Aug. 8, 2013). As a result of a recent merger, the company’s GEO Community Services unit has an exclusive contract with ICE to provide supervision services for non-detained individuals (e.g., electronic monitoring ordered as part of the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program). GEO Group, Inc., United States Securities and Exchange Commission, Form 10-Q, at 34-35, 47-48. GEO Community Services secured a $3.3 million contract for monitoring and additional ISAP services in the first half of 2013, giving it a revenue bump of 2.7% over the first half of 2012. GEO Group, Inc., United States Securities and Exchange Commission, Form 10-Q, at 42.

Despite its growth in non-detained services, the company remains committed to prisons. In the first half of 2013, 66.3% of its revenue came from detention (of all kinds, not just immigration-related). GEO Group, Inc., United States Securities and Exchange Commission, Form 10-Q, at 41. To continue building its immigration detention business, it recently purchased the Joe Corley Detention Center in Montgomery County, Texas which houses immigration detainees. GEO Group, Inc., United States Securities and Exchange Commission, Form 10-Q, at 22. Furthermore, GEO receive $12.8 million from activating services at the Adelanto Detention Facility East in California which houses up to 1,300 immigration detainees, and beginning to satisfy a new contract with the U.S. Marshals Service for immigration prisoners at the Aurora Detention Facility in Colorado. GEO Group, Inc., United States Securities and Exchange Commission, Form 10-Q, at 41.