Public relations issues In February 2013, the GEO Group's private foundation pledged US$6 million to company founder George Zoley's alma mater,
Florida Atlantic University (FAU) (Zoley was also onetime Chair of the FAU Board of Trustees). In return, the GEO Group received
naming rights to the university's
football stadium. In April, after pressure from students, faculty, and alumni, GEO Group withdrew the gift. The GEO Group's Executive Vice President Adam Hasner then became President of
FAU in 2025. Public relations firm
Edelman supported GEO Group and was characterized by one source as helping in "laundering the reputation of private US concentration camps" in July 2019. In May 2019,
The New York Times reported that executives from the
Washington, D.C., office, including office president Lisa Ross and former Trump White House deputy press secretary,
Lindsay Walters, traveled to Florida to present the pitch. In terminating California's contract with GEO's Central Valley Modified Community Correctional Facility in McFarland, Governor
Gavin Newsom said that this was a step intended to, "end the outrage of private prisons once and for all." Newsom further stated: "Private, for-profit prisons have been used for many years to help the state overcome
prison overcrowding challenges, but it is time to end our reliance on them." In November 2019,
CalPERS, the $370 billion public employee pension fund, quietly divested from GEO Group and CoreCivic, as well. CalSTRS and CalPERS constitute the largest public pension funds in the United States. Both divestment campaigns were led by Emily Claire Goldman of Educators for Migrant Justice, a non-profit organization targeting public pension funds that it says are "aiding and abetting the administration's egregious abuses of migrant families, children, and asylum seekers." A predominantly Jewish organization called "Never Again", as part of demonstrations held around the U.S., protested outside GEO Group's Century City headquarters on August 5, 2019, shutting down the building for five hours, hoisting a banner characterizing ICE facilities as "concentration camps", and refusing to leave the lobby, resulting in the arrest of several activists.
Prison riots Several
prison riots occurred in the mid-to-late 2000s. On April 24, 2007, inmates rioted for two hours at the GEO Group's state-owned
New Castle Correctional Facility in Indiana. The riot resulted in fires and minor injuries to staff and inmates. The Indiana Department of Correction concluded that its recent transfer of 600 inmates over six weeks from Arizona to a new section at New Castle increased tensions at the facility, as the inmates comprised a large group and prison staff lacked experience. The department held the inmates responsible for the riot. Following the riot, Indiana authorities suspended further transfers of Arizona inmates, pending measures to help out-of-state inmates adjust to Indiana prison policies, and to ensure that inmates were transferred more gradually to be able to integrate them into the prison population at New Castle. In 2008 and 2009, prisoners at the
Reeves County Detention Complex in Texas, the largest privately owned prison in the United States, rioted over poor conditions. The complex housed more than 3700 prisoners, mostly immigrants serving short sentences prior to deportation. They caused damages of $1 million and $21 million, respectively, as the second riot resulted in a severe fire.
Other incidents, lawsuits, and investigations 2000s In 2001, an inmate was murdered at GEO's
Willacy County State Jail in Texas by two other inmates. The inmate's family sued GEO in 2006, resulting in a finding of liability of $47.5 million for destruction of evidence and negligently causing the man's death. In 2009, GEO appealed the court's decision; the appeals court reduced the damages to $42.5 million. Between 2005 and 2009, at least eight people died at the GEO Group-operated George W. Hill Correctional Facility, Pennsylvania's only privately-run jail. Family members then filed lawsuits against the company and facility, alleging that it did not provide adequate medical care or proper supervision for offenders. GEO withdrew from operating the facility on December 31, 2008, "citing underperformance and frequent litigations". As of 2018, GEO is again managing this facility. In 2007, the
Texas Youth Commission (TYC) fired seven employees responsible for monitoring prison conditions after discovering that the GEO Group-run Coke County Juvenile Justice Center had "deplorable conditions". The seven employees had earlier worked directly for GEO. They had failed to report problems at the county facility, but an inspection by the TYC found the facility to be understaffed, ill-managed, and unsanitary. The TYC ordered that all inmates be transferred elsewhere, terminated their state contract with GEO, and subsequently closed the facility. GEO had run the facility since 1994.
2010s In February 2012, GEO Group and Mississippi state authorities settled a class-action suit was that had been filed in 2010 against state authorities and GEO over conditions at the
Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility in Mississippi, the largest juvenile facility in the United States. The settlement required the state to end its contract with GEO, and put operations at the facility under a federal court monitor. The state transferred juvenile offenders to state-run facilities, and the company additionally lost contracts for operating two other prisons in Mississippi. In July 2012, two undocumented immigrants in Florida turned themselves in to police in order to get themselves placed in the Broward Transitional Center, which was holding immigration detainees, It is the only privately owned immigration detention center in Florida. assertedly to report on conditions inside the facility, as accounts in the immigrant community alleged substandard conditions. The pair alleged "substandard or callous medical care, including a woman taken for ovarian surgery and returned the same day, still bleeding, to her cell, and a man who urinated blood for days but was not taken to see a doctor". In September 2012, U.S. Congressman
Ted Deutch of Pompano Beach wrote a letter to ICE regarding the contract under which GEO operates the facility, requesting a case-by-case investigation. Twenty-five other congressional representatives signed on to the inquiry. This eventually grew into a March 2017 class-action lawsuit alleging violations of the U.S. Constitution and federal antislavery laws with respect to 60,000 current and former immigrant detainees at the Denver Contract Detention Facility based in
Aurora, Colorado. The suit alleged that the detainees were made to work for less than a dollar a day or for nothing at all. On December 2, 2017, 64-year-old Kamyar Samimi, who had come to the U.S. in 1976, was taken into ICE custody at his home due to his having been arrested for a minor drug offense in 2005. He was imprisoned at the Aurora contract facility, where he died 16 days later from
cardiac arrest. In 2012, Evalin-Ali Mandza died of cardiac arrest at the same detention center. An investigation of Mandza's death found GEO employees did not know how to use an EKG machine and procrastinated in calling an ambulance. In 2019, the
Denver City Council voted to terminate a $10 million contract with GEO and CoreCivic, but later temporarily extended those contracts, and in 2022 approved a new $1.5 million contract for GEO Group to provide electronic monitoring equipment for the city. In September 2017, Washington State Attorney General
Bob Ferguson sued GEO Group for not paying immigrant detainees the state's $11 hourly minimum wage, characterizing the detainees as "a captive population of vulnerable individuals who cannot easily advocate for themselves". The corporation was paying detainees with snacks or $1 per day for their labor which provided all the non-security employment at its
Northwest Detention Center, a facility in
Tacoma, Washington. In 2018, two Florida employees of Behavioral Intervention Inc., a GEO subsidiary, were arrested for taking bribes of up to $5,000 to have electronic monitoring devices removed from immigrants who were allowed to remain free on bail if they wore the monitors. Elisa Pelaez was sentenced to thirty-three months in federal prison, and others were set to be sentenced later in the year. In December 2019, 13 fathers in Texas sued the company alleging family separation. Due to the controversies surrounding mass incarceration of immigrants in private for-profit detention centers, several banks, including
Bank of America,
Wells Fargo, and
JPMorgan Chase, announced that they would no longer offer lines of credit and term loans to the companies involved.
2020s In March 2023, a
class-action lawsuit was filed against GEO Group by the Social Justice Legal Foundation, alleging that GEO Group engaged in a "months-long poisoning" of more than 1,300 detainees at the
Adelanto Detention Center in
San Bernardino County, California, by improperly spraying a cleaning agent known as HDQ Neutral in poorly ventilated areas from February 2020 to April 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic. In June 2024, the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) filed an administrative complaint against GEO Group, alleging that GEO Group used a disinfectant known as Halt without proper protections at its Adelanto Detention Center more than 1,000 times in 2022 and 2023. In 2025, the EPA stated that its case against GEO Group would be dropped without providing an explanation. In 2025,
Rümeysa Öztürk, a
Tufts University PhD student, was held at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center (SLIPC), a GEO detention center in
Basile, Louisiana. In court filings, she alleged that it took 20–60 minutes for a nurse to arrive when she was having asthma attacks. She also noted there were not enough language interpreters. In general, she stated, the prison conditions are "depriving us of basic human needs." In September 2025, human rights organizations including the
American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana filed complaints on behalf of four trans individuals detained at SLIPC under the
Federal Tort Claims Act and submitted a civil rights complaint to
U.S. Department of Homeland Security oversight bodies alleging sexual harassment, medical neglect, coerced labor, retaliation and other abuses from GEO staff dating from 2023. GEO denied the allegations.
Operation Mississippi Hustle A federal investigation dubbed
Operation Mississippi Hustle, initiated in 2014 or earlier by the United States Attorney and prosecuted in the
United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi, examined the relationship between officials of the
Mississippi Department of Corrections and local jurisdictions, and various prison contractors and subcontractors. The investigation resulted in indictments against the commissioner of the Department of Corrections, and the longtime mayor of
Walnut Grove, Mississippi, both of whom resigned from office. As a result of this investigation, in February 2017, Mississippi State Attorney General
Jim Hood announced a civil suit against 15 contractors and several persons for damages and punitive damages, to recover the amounts of state contracts awarded under Epps during the roughly decade-long period when he has been found to have been taking bribes. GEO Group was among the for-profit prison management companies named in this suit. Hood said that the company had been awarded $260 million in contracts in an eight-year period. == See also ==