Vicious Nexus between the GEO Group and ICE: Profit-making from Pain

By Rezwan Masud

- Immigrant, Nayyirah Waheed

The stories of the plight of the asylum seekers, refugees, and undocumented immigrants continue to make the headlines in the United States on a regular basis. It has become a major issue of political debate as the rhetoric of keeping "illegal immigrants" out of the US and "building the wall" proved to earn attention during the last presidential election. Due to various reasons ranging from perceived economic insecurity and political propaganda, immigration has been unjustly associated with criminalization while the rise of ultra-nationalist chauvinism continues to victimize immigrants in different parts of the world.  While many have become aware of harsh US policies towards immigrants after the Trump administration took charge, the history of cruelty towards immigrants in this country is not new. The public, however, is less aware of a vicious nexus that exists between the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and the GEO Group, a for-profit prison corporation that runs private immigration detention centers in different parts of the country.

As part of a research project conducted for a graduate class at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver in 2018, we found that ICE and private prison corporations like GEO are inhumanely profiting from the pain of immigrant detainees. Interviews with former immigrant detainees, activists, and legal experts suggest that the increased influence of private corporate interest has worsened the conditions for immigrants in detention centers. The financial interests of the companies to make a profit by locking up immigrants, aided by the political agenda of ICE to secure the border, reinforces the dehumanization and criminalization of immigrants and denies them necessary legal rights like the right to be released on bond and use free telephone service.

As part of our study, we volunteered for Casa de Paz (House of Peace), a non-profit organization that provides essential support services for separated families of asylum seekers and immigrants locked up in GEO detention center in Aurora, Colorado. Specifically, Casa offers post-detention release support to help unite formerly detained immigrants with their families. We volunteered for three months, during which we also interviewed several former detainees, volunteers, the founder of the organization, and immigration lawyers and experts. Our interactions with former detainees revealed that immigrants attempt to come to the United States for different reasons: some try to enter the US because of the fear of political persecution elsewhere, some try to live the so-called American dream while others try to seek refuge here, and for many, it’s a mix of all these factors. Many immigrants just want to have a life of their own but cannot afford the necessary documents for various reasons including stricter border policies, hardened legal modes of entry, expensive legal process, and prohibitive measures from many countries. But the treatment that they face by the US authorities is reprehensible.

In the current fiscal year, 21 detainees have died in ICE custody, which is the highest death toll under their watch since 2005. The majority of the detainees in these centers are asylum seekers with no criminal record, and over 70% of detainees are held in privately-run detention centers. Starting from the border to detention center, while some may have even been picked up locally or even transferred to one detention facility from another, they are termed as “arriving aliens” and treated like criminal inmates in prison. 

The federal government works hand-in-hand with private corporations in dehumanizing impoverished and marginalized asylum seekers. Private detention companies spend millions on federal lobbying efforts and get contracts to detain immigrants and asylum seekers to make profits in return. President Trump has received more than 25 times the amount of contributions than President Barack Obama received from these companies – $969,000 to Trump and $38,000 to Obama. The GEO group, in collaboration with ICE, operates private detention centers across the United States where asylum seekers end up spending months and years after attempting to enter the US in search of safe shelter. Immigration detention has exploded under the Trump administration as ICE has been increasingly refusing to grant parole to detainees and has made it more difficult for detainees to gain access to legal counsel. It is alleged that the GEO group makes billions of dollars in operating these detention centers.

Due to the overwhelming power of corporate capitalism, regardless of the political party in power, the federal government has been dehumanizing immigrants and framing them as criminals through private prison corporations and legislation that links undocumented migrants with criminality. The 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) and the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), for example, helped frame immigration through the lens of crime by establishing the concept of “criminal alienhood”, and reclassifying undocumented immigrants as deportable and inadmissible under criminal law provisions. Apart from the legal barriers, Dowling and Inda (2013) analyze multiple ways in which the United States has associated immigrants with social and economic maladies, including accusations “of displacing American workers, depressing wages, spreading diseases, and burdening public services.” A respondent in our study who was detained at a GEO group owned facility shared the following which shows how they are treated like slaves inside and exploited for making profit: 

“We are not criminals, but we were treated like criminals. We faced unnecessary harassment. Valuable time of my life was lost. I never spent time in jail before, but the two and half years that I spent inside detention centers changed my perception about the system of this country. There is no humanity. They talk about human rights; reality is totally opposite. I lost my loving mother one month prior to my release. She was only 49, but she had a brain stroke. My father suffered from a heart attack when I was detained. I cannot tell how many nights I could not sleep. I cannot explain how many teardrops I had to endure.”

The rhetoric of GEO group is to uphold human dignity; they claim on their website that they “strive to uphold the health, welfare, and basic rights of these individuals by working to ensure their safety, security and well-being while under our protection and care”. The reality, however, stands in dark contrast with the inhumane conditions and focus on profit that former detainees shared with us.

In Colorado, thousands of immigrant detainees were allegedly forced to work for $1 a day, and according to a lawsuit complaint, many of them were paid for labor with “chicken, potato chips, soda, or candy.” When we interviewed former detainees, one of them complained about the substandard quality of food that they received in the detention center. Like inmates, they were forced to have breakfast at around 4:30 in the morning. García Hernández (2019) argues in his book that although detention is not supposed to be a punishment, multiple administrations have resorted to harsh policies and treatment to deter people from coming to the country. Many of our respondents did not have any criminal charges brought against them, but they were bound to share a small cell. One of our respondents believed that the food quality was deliberately bad to make profit because detainees were bound to buy food from the over-priced shops inside the detention center:

“The food used to taste so bad that we had to buy food from shops inside where items were expensive. 70%-80% of the food that they provide are wasted, they know it, still they do not bother because it is a profit for them if we are compelled to buy from their shops. The detainees would easily trade off three meals a day for one bowl of soup [which must be purchased].”

Regarding exploitation of labor for making profit, one former detainee detailed his plight to us in the following way:

“My life inside the detention center for 18 months was such that at one point [because of shortage of money], I started working in the kitchen. In exchange of working for 9 hours, I used to get $1 each day. This way I could earn only $5 in 5 days. Making phone call to my family members at home country was so expensive that I could talk for a few minutes with my earnings of one week [at a rate of 69 cents per minute].” 

Other detainees shared that if the they wanted to talk to their family members, they had to spend a significant portion of their savings to pay to use GEO’s phone because they were not allowed to use mobile phones inside. One former detainee informed us that mobile phones were confiscated by the detention authorities after they were taken in. To make phone calls within the US, he had to pay 11 cents per minute, and to talk to his family members abroad, he paid 69 cents per minute. To speak with their attorneys, they also had to use the detention center’s expensive phone service, although detainees are legally entitled to use free telephone service to seek legal representation.

Another former detainee showed us receipts of certain products like noodles, soup, and cookies ,which clearly showed that the detention center authority was taking more money than the usual price from the detainees. For example, one packet of noodles which cost 25 cents outside used to cost 96 cents inside the detention center. Another respondent stated that the detention process was making profit off of them, making them feel like products to be exploited.

In Tanya Maria Golash-Boza’s (2015) book, Deported, she argues that the neoliberal profit-making agenda makes immigrant detainees expendable. At a deeper level, she argued that structural racism and nativism is linked with harsh policies that target black and brown detainees as criminals. Our study found that some detainees faced torture-like situations after arbitrary arrests and while in detention, as is evident from the narrative of one former detainee:

“I was put on suicide watch for 4 days. I was forced to remain naked while someone was watching me the whole time. I was given only a blanket to cover myself at night. I felt like it was a type of torture.”

Moreover, the detainees talked about their harrowing experience of facing harsh treatment if they became sick inside the detention center. In many cases, they were prescribed ibuprofen and water. If detainees requested a medical checkup, they were kept in suspense as to when doctors would visit them, and shockingly, doctors frequently visited them past midnight, leading them to forego a night’s sleep in that condition. This treatment adds to their torture-like anxiety rather than alleviating their illness. Respondents in our study shared that after fleeing from their home countries to avoid persecution, harassment inside the detention centers made them pass countless tearful and sleepless nights. To avoid going through such uncertainty and facing further indignity, detainees often ignored their health conditions and decided not to report illnesses. The medical condition of the detainees worsened so much that attorneys in Colorado had to file a lawsuit against ICE in April, 2020 to release medically at-risk detainees from the detention center. In doing so, they alleged a violation of the Fifth Amendment, which forbids the government from depriving a person of life, liberty or property without due process. It is not a surprise, therefore, that a Coronavirus outbreak was confirmed at the ICE detention center in Colorado in June, 2020 which led to many detainees and staff being infected with the deadly virus. 

Conditions in detention also create difficulties for detainees to access attorneys. When they have already been living in the US and put into detention, detainees are pulled far from their social kinship networks, and even their attorneys when they are transferred suddenly from one center to another. These transfers, high phone charges, and restricted access to outside information makes access to legal service more difficult, which is otherwise critical to winning their cases. Although some organizations like the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network, Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, and American Friends Service Committee provide, or connect detainees to pro bono legal services in Colorado, if the detainees do not have information,  they are bound to pay high rates per visit of their lawyers. A former detainee said, “I had to give $500 per visit to the lawyer when I accessed one. I had to pay him 14 times.” 

What is the way forward to prevent such gross violations of human rights by the profit-making detention industry? Michael Dougherty, the District Attorney of Boulder, spoke as a discussant in an event held at the University of Denver, arguing that private immigration detention needs to be dismantled to protect human rights. He argued,

 

"Profits should have no role in the justice system.  Private corporations should not be responsible for prisons and immigration detention facilities.  These corporations have incentive to cut costs and increase their profits, at the expense of those within the system and the public’s confidence in our government.  We must prioritize human and legal rights over profits and cost-savings.  Until we do so, individuals will continue to suffer — along with the public’s faith in these systems."

 

García Hernández (2019) convincingly argued in his book that immigration detention policies need to be abolished because they are designed just to punish people for being born in wrong place and there is no empirical evidence suggesting that detaining immigrants helps with the rule of law. The legal experts that we interviewed suggested that while the lives of immigrants in detention were not easy under the Obama administration, the situation worsened under the Trump administration. Julie Gonzales, former policy director at a law firm and now a Colorado state senator, did not sound optimistic given the power that private corporations have over making. She frankly said:

 

“I think it will continue to get worse and can only get better with mobilization from the grassroots. One day Trump isn't going to wake up and realize that he’s married to an immigrant and say that immigrants deserve dignity and human rights. I am optimistic about people, but not with the institution.”

 

However, activists have suggested that there is a general lack of awareness about the violations of human rights that these private detention centers increasingly continue to perpetrate. Recent controversies about caging children at the border and separating immigrant families have stirred public consciousness, generating more awareness about the politicized nature of ICE as an organization.  From grassroots mobilizers to mainstream politicians, there are widespread appeals to abolish ICE as an organization. Grassroots activism and mobilization of public opinion in this regard can put public pressure against terrible violations of human rights that are taking place under the watch of the ICE and GEO group. Corporations like the GEO group are expanding their activities to make more profit out of pain, and under such circumstances,  politicians and policy makers have to step up to protect human rights. Conscious citizens should play a role in creating awareness and advocating for change . There should be more support for organizations like the American Friends Service Committee, Detention Watch Network, Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network, Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, and Casa de Paz who are working relentlessly to create public awareness by their support for sanctuary cities, organizing vigils in front of detention centers, and events like ICE on Trial to hold the agency accountable for these violations. 

It is imperative to generate more dialogue about these issues so that asylum seekers, refugees, and undocumented immigrants are treated with human dignity. Policy makers should be cognizant of the fact that the harsh treatment towards these detainees is self-defeating. The detention industry spent around $2.8 billion to detain immigrants in the 2018 fiscal year, and increased federal allocation for ICE under the current administration means that more tax dollars of the American people are being spent to facilitate harsh and abhorrent immigration policies while private corporations like GEO group continue to earn profits at the cost of detained immigrants.  While ICE boasts of protecting American interests, the public should be aware of how  private detention centers stand against America’s propagated values at taxpayer expense.

Rezwan Masud completed his MA in International Studies at the University of Denver's Josef Korbel School of International Studies in 2018. He is currently a PhD candidate in Political Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Mohammad.RezwanulHaqueMasud@colorado.edu