Guess Which CEOs Are Already Drooling Over Trump’s Deportation Plans?
Donald Trump plans to enact the largest deportation in U.S. history, and private prisons are already sniffing the air at the “unprecedented opportunity” for moneymaking that a second Trump administration will offer.
It seems that investors are betting big on Trump’s plans to detain and then forcibly deport millions of both undocumented and legal immigrants—a move that could send the U.S. economy tumbling while making those who profit off of human suffering rich beyond their wildest dreams.
Geo Group, the country’s largest private prison company, was the biggest winner in the stock market after Trump’s victory was announced Wednesday, according to economic outlet Sherwood. The company saw a 40 percent jump in shares Wednesday alone, and its share price went from $14.18 the day before the election to $24.43 on Thursday.
In 2023, 43 percent of Geo Group’s top-line revenue, more than $2.4 billion, came from contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
George Zoley, the founder and executive chairman, could barely contain his excitement during an earnings call Thursday. “We expect the incoming Trump administration to take a much more aggressive approach regarding border security as well as interior enforcement, and to request additional funding from Congress to achieve these goals,” Zoley said, according to Bloomberg.
“This is to us an unprecedented opportunity,” he added.
Private prison executives also talked about expanding their services to meet the demand of the government’s plans. Zoley said that GEO Group was “well-positioned” to more than double its number of ICE detention beds, from 13,500 to “over 31,000 beds,” according to HuffPost.
They also discussed expanding their prisoner transport services, as well as their Intensive Supervision Appearance Program, or ISAP, which presents surveillance programs as “alternatives to detention.”
CEO Brian Evans said that the GEO Group’s ISAP programs currently had around 182,000 participants but could be scaled way, way up, to “several hundreds of thousands of participants, and up to several million if necessary.”
Signs indicate that ICE is already looking to expand this program in anticipation of Trump’s administration. HuffPost reported that CoreCivic, another private prison group, said that ICE had posted a request for information about ISAPs on Thursday, a precursor for contract proposals down the road.