The Trump administration’s warehouse buying spree is drawing interest from one of the largest private prison contractors, although a top executive acknowledged Thursday that retrofitting the facilities to detain immigrants will be a challenge.
Geo Group is “cautiously participating” in the procurement process for running the warehouses and evaluating select sites, the company’s executive chair, George Zoley, told investors during an earnings call. The Department of Homeland Security wants to hold as many as 8,500 people in some of the several warehouses it has purchased in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Texas.
ICE contractor GEO Group, was originally Wackenhut Corrections, owned by George Wackenhut, who once claimed to hold the largest collection of private files on suspected American dissidents
•The Wackenhut Corporation materials have a higher concentration of materials dating from the 1960s through 1970s and document the shifting concerns of the right from strictly Communism to the anti-war movement and left counterculture more broadly.
Yes…, to detain “immigrants.” Of course.
•George C. Zoley, chairman of the board and founder of GEO Group, the second largest private prison company is the United States, has been with GEO or its former parent company, the Wackenhut Corporation, since 1981. Zoley has called the late George Wackenhut, the controversial right-wing founder of Wackenhut Corporation, the person he most admired.