Following GEO Group’s generous donations to the Trump campaign (the company “gave $225,000 to a pro-Trump super PAC before the election,” per OpenSecrets), the private prison profiteer is getting plenty of say in administration matters.
“As California prepared to pass a ‘sanctuary’ law in 2017,” Mother Jones reports, the “private prison company sent a legal memo about the bill’s impact to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The memo circulated to the agency’s highest levels, and ICE legal officials cited it in their own analysis of the law.”
GEO Group has plenty to lose. Senate Democrats have said that the group has “received $560 million in federal contracts in the last two fiscal years.” For all that dough, a surprise government inspection of one of their facilities in California found that one detainee had been on a dentist waitlist for so long that multiple teeth fell out.
“When we asked one of the dentists why fillings were not performed, he said he barely has time to do cleanings and screening, so as a result he does not do fillings,” the report continued, stating that the dentist “suggested detainees could use string from their socks to floss if they were dedicated to dental hygiene.”
Regarding GEO Group’s thoughts on the state’s anti-deportation legislation, “ICE would not answer questions about the memo or its contents,” Mother Jones continues. “In a statement, spokeswoman Sarah Rodriguez suggested that this kind of contact between GEO and ICE is normal: ‘Once a service provider is selected, regular communication between personnel at various levels related to detention services may be necessary and is entirely appropriate.”
“Service provider” is an awfully quaint way to refer to a private prison company that has miserably failed inspections and tells inmates with rotting teeth to floss with their socks. “Now we see what they got,” Democracy Forward told Mother Jones. “An administration that has granted the GEO Group privileged access and opportunities for input on important public policy decisions from which it stands to profit.”
