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Trump’s “Border Czar” Was on GEO Group Payroll
Before Pres. Donald J. Trump (R) took office, his “border czar” Tom Homan worked as a consultant for GEO Group, Inc., one of the largest operators of immigrant detention facilities in the country.
The revelation, as the Washington Post reported, raises questions about the influence that private sector companies could wield as the administration rolls out its crackdown on immigration. According to the report, Homan received more than $5,000—although his pay could have been much higher—for work conducted in connection with GEO Care, a division of the company that monitors releases and offers rehabilitation services for prisoners.
On the campaign trail, Trump vowed to deport up to 20 million people from the country—nearly double the estimated population of 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. Since his inauguration, Trump has expressed dissatisfaction with the rate of arrests and deportations conducted by federal immigration authorities.
In an effort to ramp up deportations, the administration set an aggressive new goal in May 2025 of 3,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests per day. To keep up that pace of detentions, federal authorities have turned to already overcrowded federal prisons and local jails to imprison people targeted by immigration raids—and to GEO Group.
GEO Group’s stock value rose dramatically after the inauguration. Since then, the company has earned numerous contracts with ICE, including a $47 million contract to expand a Georgia facility—which will make it the largest detention facility in the country.
Meanwhile, the company continues to fight a legal battle over its policy of paying detainees only $1 per day to perform jobs including laundry, scrubbing toilets, and washing dishes at a facility in Washington, where the legal minimum wage was $11 per hour when the state filed suit over the practice in 2017. A jury in federal court sided with the state against GEO Group in 2021, resulting in awards that eventually topped $37 million, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Apr. 2022, p.30.] The company appealed the ruling earlier this year.
Sources: Washington Post, ProPublica, The Guardian
