by Jo Ellen Knott

Corporate influence-peddling is alive and well in the Trump brand of politics. Private prison titan The GEO Group handed over $1.4 million to President Donald Trump’s super PAC, MAGA Inc., just days after securing federal detention contracts worth $165 million annually.

Campaign finance filings reveal that GEO Group subsidiary GEO Reentry Services donated $1 million to MAGA Inc. on July 16, 2026, exactly three days after announcing an $85 million annual contract to run a 1,188-bed facility in Hudson, Colorado for federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). On July 31, the company funneled another $413,000 to the PAC, two days after landing an $80 million annual deal for another 1,320-bed site it will operate for ICE in Winton, North Carolina.

Despite White House officials claiming contract awards are not affected by political money, the timing exposes the blatant pay-to-play dynamics governing the mass deportation pipeline. GEO Group’s net income soared to $254.3 million amid the administration’s crackdown, up from $31.9 million in 2024. Company founder George Zoley boasted to investors that this expansion represents the largest surge of new business in the company’s history.

The grift extends deeper into government oversight: …

by Chuck Sharman

The West Virginia Circuit Court for Kanawha County gave its approval on September 1, 2026, to a $700,000 settlement reached five days earlier between the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (DCR) and Lisa Huffman, personnel representative of the Estate of Nathan James Kennedy, a pretrial detainee killed at the North Central Regional Jail in 2023.

Kennedy, 48, died less than three hours after he was booked into the lockup on September 8, 2023, following an altercation with a housemate that led to his arrest. A later investigation of surveillance video by State Police (WVSP) clocked Kennedy’s arrival at 3:44 p.m. He was seen by a nurse employed by the jail’s privately contracted medical provider, Wexford Health Sources, to whom Kennedy reported he suffered from high pressure. He also admitted taking methamphetamines. He was then placed briefly in a metal cage before he was led through a body scanner at 4:01 p.m. Less than 20 minutes after booking, guards put him in another metal cage, and things quickly went south from there.

There was no audio on the surveillance tape, but a Wexford nurse charted that Kennedy began banging his head on the …

by Jo Ellen Knott

The sale of Minnesota’s shuttered Prairie Correctional Facility to the federal government has left the small city of Appleton (1,300 residents) facing tax revenue loss, infrastructure strain, and unenforceable corporate promises from private prison giant CoreCivic.

After CoreCivic sold the 1,600-bed facility to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in August 2026 for $496 million and securing a lucrative $536 million, five-year federal contract to operate it as an ICE immigrant detention center, the property became federally owned and tax-exempt. Consequently, Appleton, Swift County and the local school district lost all future property tax revenue, which previously totaled $800,000 annually from the vacant lockup alone.

To placate local officials, CoreCivic proposed a draft memorandum of understanding offering $1.5 million in 2026 and $1.2 million annually thereafter. However, the proposed agreement offers zero legal protection for the municipality. The draft explicitly states that it “does not constitute a legally binding or enforceable contract” and creates “no legally enforceable rights, duties, or obligations.” CoreCivic can walk away without liability, leaving Appleton entirely uncompensated.

Meanwhile, the 1,600-bed facility threatens to severely strain Appleton’s emergency medical services, ambulance capacity and municipal water and sewer infrastructure. …

by Chuck Sharman

On August 20, 2026, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed a lower court ruling declining to stay an injunction preventing federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from subjecting migrant detainees to unconstitutional conditions of confinement at its Adelanto Processing Center in California.

In its decision, the Court rejected the government’s attempt to foist blame on private prison giant The GEO Group, Inc., which operates the facility under contract from ICE. The Court also said that the rights violated were guaranteed to plaintiff detainees by the Fifth Amendment, rejecting the government’s argument that the injunction impermissibly interfered with its prerogative to “choose the place of detention for deportable aliens”—the basis of a 2022 Court ruling that voided application to the federal government of a state law banning privately contracted detention facilities.

Just how bad were the conditions at Adelanto? The injunction issued by the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California on July 16—which also certified a Class of Plaintiff detainees—ordered ICE to ensure that those confined at the lockup had “24-hour access to clean potable drinking water” and “[n]utritious and sanitary meals” with “a sufficient number of …

by Chuck Sharman

On September 3, 2026, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana entered judgment for $763,000 against state Department of Correction (DOC) healthcare contractor Centurion Health of Indiana, after a jury found its personnel liable for failing to provide adequate treatment to state prisoner Austin Lee Monteiro, 47, for his painful kidney disease.

According to the complaint he later filed, Monteiro was diagnosed with polycystic kidney disease in 2008, before his 2018 incarceration in the DOC. He reminded Centurion Dr. Jason Carter of the diagnosis in March 2023, when Monteiro visited the medical unit at New Castle Correctional Facility complaining of kidney pain. Carter referred him to an offsite nephrologist, Dr. Lori Wanko, who recommended Tolvapton, a drug to reduce cyst growth and ease his pain. In July, Dr. Stephanie Riley, Centurion’s statewide director, approved an exception to the formulary for the drug. But by August, Monteiro had still not received it.

Suddenly, Carter said that he was not authorized to prescribe it, initiating another delay while he obtained a prescription from Wanko. But Carter also had blood drawn from Monteiro for the necessary lab work to begin the treatment. It …

by Michael Dean Thompson

Detainees in the Baltimore jail filed a lawsuit in 1976 over conditions of their confinement and medical care, and the case runs on. Five years later, the lawsuit was brought into a class action that resulted in a decree. The case continued to be revised, settled and revived over the succeeding decades until a 2016 settlement established the current decree. U.S. District Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander said in her opinion then, “The litigation is now in its fifth decade. Hopefully, the case is drawing to an end.” See: Duvall v. O’Malley, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 83478.

But it was not and a third extension was granted in June 2026, dragging the litigation into its sixth decade. The Baltimore jail now has until December 31, 2027 to reach full compliance.

The jail remains fully noncompliant in at least six areas and partially noncompliant in many others. Complicating their compliance efforts is the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services’ (DPSCS) use of the private healthcare company Centurion Health, which has been unable to meet the necessary staffing levels. Accordingly, the provider has not been responding in a timely manner, and sometimes not …

In 2023, the Wyoming Department of Corrections (DOC) sent dozens of state prisoners to the Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility (“Tallahatchie”) in Tutwiler, Mississippi due to understaffing. At the time, roughly 25% of the DOC’s uniformed staff positions were vacant, largely due to low pay and an inability to attract qualified candidates. Now, after the state legislature approved a salary raise for public employees, including prison guards, staffing levels have improved enough that the DOC, in early September 2026, announced that 240 prisoners are being brought back to the state.

Some of the returned prisoners were shipped in 2018 from Wyoming to the Tallahatchie lockup, which is owned by private prison profiteer CoreCivic, as PLN previously reported. [See: PLN, Dec. 2018, p.42.] Back then, the DOC paid $52,500 to send the prisoners on a 1,300-mile, 32-hour bus ride to Tutwiler. Part of the decision had to do with cost, as the DOC claimed it saved $60 per prisoner, per day by sending them to a facility operated by CoreCivic, a company with a long track record of mismanagement, understaffing and custodial deaths.

While current staffing levels prompted the prisoners’ return, the DOC remains open to reviving the …

by Douglas Ankney

"When mom told staff something was wrong, they said to her ‘you’re fine, you’re fine’ even though there was fluid literally coming out of her belly button,” said Evangelina Perez, describing her incarcerated mother’s condition after missing another dialysis treatment. Evangelina Perez lost count of the number of times her mother, Martha Perez, called her, gasping for breath because of missed dialysis treatments for kidney failure.

The 59-year-old Martha suffered from kidney failure, diabetes, and congestive heart failure. Incarcerated at various facilities within the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) since 2005 on money laundering and drug convictions, she was sent to the Federal Medical Center Carswell (“Carswell”) in 2018.

Located in Fort Worth, Texas, Carswell is the nation’s only federal medical prison for women and houses some of the sickest women in the BOP’s custody. It is also the only female BOP facility that provides in-patient dialysis—a critical and life-sustaining treatment for kidney failure. But according to lawyers, medical experts and former BOP officials, along with court and medical records, Carswell fails to provide adequate dialysis care.

The statements and records describe missed dialysis treatments, ill-informed patients, dialysis machines that break down …

by Michael Dean Thompson

Centurion of Delaware, a former prison healthcare contractor for the state, is the subject of a whistleblower lawsuit that has been joined by the state’s Attorney General, Kathy Jennings (D). The lawsuit alleges that Centurion of Delaware profited from fraud as it was paid hundreds of millions of dollars for healthcare and drug treatment. Furthermore, the care they provided was so deficient as to cause undue suffering, which included maiming and neglect.

But the state also failed to notice the suffering of those in its charge until it was too late. Delaware’s Division of Legislative Services (DLS) was tasked with looking into the state’s oversight committee to understand how such problems might be unearthed or missed altogether. The May 2026 Staff Report provided by DLS determined, “Delaware lacks a health care oversight system with the independence, structure, and data-driven processes needed to identify systemic issues and support meaningful improvement.” The report shows that the committee has all but abdicated its oversight responsibilities.

The Adult Correction Healthcare Review Committee (ACHRC) was created in 2008 with the goal of ensuring “prisoners receive quality care while recognizing that untreated diseases could have outsized impacts both …

by Chuck Sharman

Under a settlement reached in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina, Charleston County agreed to pay $280,000 to resolve claims filed by the Estate of Julian Jenkins, a detainee who died six days after his incarceration in the County’s Al Cannon Detention Center (ACDC) in March 2023.

Jenkins, 50, had been picked up on a three-year old warrant for theft of a $97 vacuum cleaner. Found to be in extremely poor health—he was not only on dialysis for late-stage kidney failure but also suffering congestive heart failure, hypertension and hypothyroidism—he was placed in the jail infirmary under the care of its contracted private healthcare provider, Wellpath LLC. Its staffers noted in Jenkins’ chart on March 10, the day after his arrest, that his condition was unstable and recommended sending him to a hospital emergency room.

But that didn’t happen. Nor did it happen three days later, when the weekend ended and the staffers returned to work at the infirmary, repeating their recommendation. Jenkins was found unresponsive in his cell the following morning and pronounced dead. An autopsy blamed the death on “natural causes,” specifically “congestive heart failure and chronic …