Private Prison Firms Set To Cash In On Immigrant Surveillance Boom
An electronic monitor bracelet is placed on a person’s ankle (AP Photo/Andre Penner) & the back of a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
Companies are salivating over a proposal to electronically track millions of people caught up in the U.S. immigration system.
s the country’s immigration agency ponders a significant expansion of its vast, troubled immigrant surveillance regime, private prison companies are telling investors that the proposal could bring significant profits — and are deploying lobbyists to fight to fund it.
In separate calls with investors last month, executives with two of the world’s largest private prison companies, the GEO Group and CoreCivic, said they were focused on a new proposal to radically expand an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) surveillance program. According to the plan, the program, which currently keeps tabs on nearly 200,000 immigrants using technologies like ankle bracelets and facial-recognition apps, could eventually track millions of people who are caught in the immigration system.
ICE’s surveillance programs have been a focus of the companies’ multi-million-dollar lobbying efforts in Washington this year, the latest example of how private incentives are shaping ICE’s vast, and growing, surveillance regime.
“I mean, we’re talking five million people that could potentially be monitored,” one investor said on a Nov. 7 earnings call for the GEO Group, whose subsidiary, BI Inc., has a five-year contract to conduct surveillance for ICE. “That business, which has 50-percent margins, could be substantially higher next year if this comes through, is that correct?”
The GEO Group’s CEO, Jose Gordo, agreed. “Yes, quantitatively,” he said — adding that actual revenue would depend on the details of the program.
The investor was alluding to ICE’s plans, which the agency released quietly in August, for a new program called Release and Reporting Management, which, as proposed, would consolidate and expand ICE’s oversight of people going through immigration proceedings.
“The central aspect of [the program] is really this electronic monitoring,” explained Jesse Franzblau, a senior policy analyst with the National Immigrant Justice Center. That, he said, would represent “a windfall for these private contractors, who lobby very hard for this money to keep flowing.”
In response to questions from The Lever, CoreCivic public affairs director Ryan Gustin wrote in an email that the company “has a long-standing, zero-tolerance policy not to advocate for or against any legislation that serves as the basis for — or determines the duration of — an individual’s incarceration or detention.”
“Where we do lobby is on educating government leaders about the solutions we provide, ensuring funding for the contracts we have, and advocating for reentry policies that help reduce recidivism,” Gustin added. As for the Release and Reporting Management program, he said, “It’s also worth noting that we stated during the call that this program is ‘not yet funded by Congress and only in the early stages.’”
A spokesperson for ICE did not respond to inquiries from The Lever. Representatives for both the GEO Group and BI Inc., its subsidiary, also did not return The Lever’s requests for comment.
“The Feeling Of Constantly Being Watched”
There are currently some 39,000 people in immigration detention across the country, a number that has steadily crept up over the last two years, and threatens to once again approach the historic highs reached under the Trump administration. Yet most people going through immigration proceedings in the United States are not detained. According to ICE, there are currently 5.7 million people with pending immigration court cases released on parole, bond, or some other form of conditional release — the “non-detained docket,” as ICE calls it.
Under the Biden administration, more and more of these immigrants have been subject to close surveillance through an ICE program called the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program. The number of people forced to participate in this “alternative to detention” program as a condition of release has more than doubled since President Joe Biden took office. For the past year, that number has hovered between 192,000 and 195,000, according to figures that GEO Group executives provided in the November earnings call.
The electronic monitoring imposed by the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program is exacting: Officers use a variety of surveillance tools to closely surveil immigrants, including GPS ankle monitors, a facial recognition smartphone app, voice recognition, and, most recently, smartwatch trackers.
“These different programs really harm people, and they have lasting impacts,” said Setareh Ghandehari, advocacy director at the Detention Watch Network, an organization that advocates for the end of immigration detention and surveillance.
Such monitoring tools, Ghandehari said, impose “the feeling of constantly being watched,” and restrict people’s freedom of movement. According to Ghandehari, the systems force immigrants into house arrest on days when a check-in with ICE is scheduled. Participants must also charge their ankle monitors every four or five hours — or potentially face deportation.
For private contractors, immigration surveillance is extremely lucrative. Currently, a Boulder, Colorado-based company called BI Inc., a subsidiary of the GEO Group, runs ICE’s Intensive Supervision Appearance Program, providing surveillance tech as well as conducting home visits and monitoring individuals. The contract brings BI Inc., and the GEO Group, hundreds of millions of dollars each year. The company was awarded a 5-year, $2.2 billion contract with ICE to run the program in 2020.