GEO Group, a mulitbillion-dollar prison company, has found its way around President Biden's executive order for the Justice Department to stop using private prisons, according to Grid News. In an internal November 2021 memo titled "Company Overview,", GEO plainly notes that it plans to work around the order to regain the $125 million it lost from the ban. GEO details a plan to partner with the U.S. Marshals Service and ICE, which are not included in the Biden order, and double down on its "electronic monitoring business". This means housing immigrants caught at the border and those jailed and awaiting trial.
The internal memo calls the record wait times for defendants and backlogs of immigrant trials "an opportunity.." GEO manages, owns or leases more than 100 properties worldwide, with roughly 86,000 beds. Even with Biden's order and a criminal justice system under intense scrutiny after the 2020 "racial reckoning", the company brought in more than $2.3 billion over the past year. Eighteen U.S. House members sent a memo to Biden calling GEO's tactics into question.
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