Mistreatment of detained persons GEO Group, together with CoreCivic, is one of the major managers of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centres. These companies systematically use detained immigrants as a source of cheap forced labour, and are responsible for family separation and inhumane conditions at their detention centres.

The Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General, an independent watchdog agency that oversees ICE, issued a damning 2021 report documenting widespread abuse at ICE detention centres. For example, inspectors in one GEO-Group-operated facility in California found “significant health and safety risks, including nooses in detainee cells, improper and overly restrictive segregation, and inadequate detainee medical care.” They also observed “expired,” “spoiled and mouldy food”, files indicating that detainees “were not offered any recreation or showers” while in solitary confinement, lack of outdoor recreation areas, and prohibitions on in-person visitation, such as with children and other family members. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the United Nations raised serious concerns about the poor health, unsanitary conditions, and mistreatment of detainees at GEO Group's Northwest Detention Center (NWDC) in Tacoma, Washington.  Due to the alarming situation at NWDC, Global Rights Advocacy, La Resistencia and Seattle University International Human Rights Clinic  urgently requested precautionary measures from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), the principal body responsible for promoting and protecting human rights across the Americas. The IACHR’s decision confirmed the “seriousness, urgency, and irreparability” of the harm caused to those detained s, calling on the state of Washington to safeguard the rights of all migrants held at the NWDC. In October 2024, the IACHR conducted the first visit to the NWDC and spoke directly with beneficiaries demanding to be released due to the abuses. 

Forced labour Detainees at GEO Group’s facilities are allegedly forced to work for as little as $1 per day, often under threat of punishment or loss of privileges. Some detainees have claimed they were not given adequate training or safety equipment. These allegations have repeatedly been raised with the company throughout the years, and in numerous instances lawsuits were filed. A series of lawsuits have been filed in federal courts from Washington to Georgia in the United States since 2014, claiming GEO Group violates minimum wage, unjust enrichment, and anti-slavery laws by coercing detainees to work for very little or no compensation.

Deaths at detention centres GEO Group runs detention facilities for profit, which means that cost-cutting measures are often implemented to reduce expenses. This can result in inadequate medical care, understaffing, and inadequate training for staff, all of which can contribute to an increased risk of deaths among detainees. A 2018 report by Human Rights Watch, and three other organisations working to advance the rights of detained immigrants, found that most detainee deaths are linked to largely inadequate medical care. 

GEO Group’s Adelanto ICE Processing Center in California is notorious for abusive conditions, and subpar medical care practices which have in many cases resulted in suicides or preventable deaths. Examples include the case of Mr. Jose Asurdia, who died in detention after a nurse ignored clear symptoms of a heart attack; Mr. Martin Vergas, who asked to be moved because of being severely ill and at high risk of contracting COVID-19, and eventually died from the disease; Mr. Vincente Caceres-Maradiaga and Mr. Sergio Alonso Lopes who did not receive the medical attention they needed; and Mr. Gonzales-Gadba who committed suicide. All died within a period of three months, making Adelanto the deadliest US detention centre facility in 2017. 

More recent examples include Mr. Ahn, who had a history of struggling with mental health issues and committed suicide in 2021 after being put in solitary confinement at GEO Group’s Mesa Verde facility, and a Nicaraguan asylum-seeker who died at GEO Group’s Aurora centre in 2022 from an embolism tied to an untreated injury, which medical experts said illustrated “a larger pattern of preventable deaths among young, relatively healthy ICE inmates”. In March 2024, Mr. Charles Leo Daniel died in custody after spending nearly 4 years in solitary confinement at the NWDC in Tacoma, WA.

Family detention and separation of children from their parents The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) contracts with several facilities to detain families with children. Three such facilities are maintained across the United States: one in Pennsylvania and two in Texas. The Karnes County Residential Center in Texas is run by GEO Group, and remains operational with a capacity for 850 individuals. These facilities have a reputation for keeping parents and children in unsafe conditions without proper medical care. For example, in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic, 185 children were detained in unsanitary conditions at these facilities, including GEO Group’s. 

Furthermore, a zero tolerance policy passed in the USA in 2018 resulted in over 3,800 children being separated from their parents at the border. Many of these children were held at GEO Group’s facilities. Civil society organisations accused GEO Group of profiting from family separation and detention. This resulted in a shareholder resolution being filed in 2019 to prohibit the company from housing immigrant detainee children or parents who had been separated from each other by U.S. government officials.

Use of force and chemical agents by employees of GEO In 2023 and 2024 the NWDC came under scrutiny after advocates released footage of what happened to several protesters after chemical agents were used on them by GEO’s employees, authorised by ICE. The video shows that immigrants detained in Tacoma were subjected to tear gas, had guns pointed at them, and were physically restrained during a hunger strike last year for better living conditions.

Rioting and hunger strikes Detainees at GEO Group facilities  often protest  against poor conditions. For instance in 2017, a facility-wide, eight-hour riot broke out in GEO Group's facility in Hinton, Oklahoma. Four hundred of the 1,940 federal inmates refused to leave the recreation yards and took control of a building. In March 2023, 300 people at the GEO-run Central Louisiana ICE Processing Centre initiated a hunger strike; similarly more than 80 people also  initiated a hunger strike at two GEO Group facilities, Mesa Verde and the Golden State Annex, against poor living conditions and “slavery wages”. The strikers were met with brutal and violent retaliation from prison staff.

Profiteering from detainees Detainees at GEO Group and Core Civic facilities are charged for all kinds of services and have to use for-profit money transfers, like Western Union or Global Tel Link, to pay for them. Phone companies can charge prisoners as much as USD 25 for a 15-minute phone call. Health care, ankle monitoring, drug testing and food services are outsourced to companies through lucrative contracts.

The U.S  Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency during Covid-19 provided each person in custody with 520 phone minutes free of charge. However,  as of June 2024, the project was stopped abruptly, leaving detainees without  essential means to stay connected with loved ones and unable to prepare for their immigration cases.

Lobbying GEO Group and CoreCivic have historically spent considerable sums on federal lobbying. In 2018 alone, GEO Group spent USD 1.56 million. Fellow private prisons giant CoreCivic spent nearly USD 10 million between 2008 and 2014 just to lobby the House appropriations subcommittee that controls immigration-detention funding. Together, according to the Migration Policy Institute, the two corporations dished out a combined half-million dollars to Trump’s inauguration committee. A report in The Daily Beast stated, "immigration advocates say, the detention corporations pay Trump and his congressional allies, whose enthusiasm for treating immigration as a crime ensures delivery of a growing population of captives to companies that pay them far below a minimum wage." In essence, the GEO Group has, and continues to employ large numbers of lobbyists in both the state government and the federal government. This is to influence lawmakers through campaign donations to enact laws to achieve higher incarceration rates, and consequently, increase profit margins.

Lawsuits and expert opinions Throughout the years, GEO Group has faced numerous lawsuits relating to human rights issues. For example:

• In 2017 Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson sued GEO Group for paying detainee workers $1 per day for their labour at the Northwest Detention Centre in Tacoma.  A federal jury in Washington State later ruled, in October 2021, that GEO Group owed $17.3 million in back pay to immigrant detainees who were denied minimum wage. GEO Group has appealed to this decision on the basis that detainees are not its employees and that an exemption on the payback for the government-run prisons should be granted to private ones. In December 2023, the Supreme Court of the State of Washington ruled in response to this class-action lawsuit that detained workers are considered “employees” therefore recipients of a fair wage under the  Washington State’s Minimum Wage Act, no exception is applicable.
• In 2019, twenty-six immigrant fathers and sons sued GEO Group alleging that armed guards in their Texas-based detention centre used excessive force to separate them, in violation of a nationwide preliminary injunction against family separations. The lawsuit was settled in January 2023.
• In March 2020, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued GEO Group for failing to release detainees it argued were at heightened risk of contracting COVID-19 because of cramped conditions and a failure to adopt precautions at the GEO-run Adelanto facility in California. This case is still ongoing.

• In April 2020, the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, González Morales, urged the U.S. administration and the GEO Group to guarantee access to healthcare, water, and sanitation at the Northwest Detention Centre in Tacoma, Washington, amid concerns about the spread of COVID-19. The GEO Group-run facility faced repeated reports of unsanitary conditions and inadequate healthcare for its 1,500 detainees.

• In October 2020, grassroots advocacy organisation Global Rights Advocacy obtained an opinion from the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (UNWGAD) regarding Fernando Aguirre-Urbina, an immigrant who spent nearly seven years in prolonged civil detention at GEO Group’s Northwest Detention Centre in Tacoma, Washington. The UNWGAD confirmed that Aguirre-Urbina's detention contravened international human rights standards and requested his unconditional release, along with the  right to compensation for the harm inflicted on him. 

• In November 2021, GEO Group was ordered to pay $23.2 million for profiting since 2005 from the labour of detainees who were paid $1 a day instead of the Washington state’s minimum wage. ​​
• In another instance, a lawsuit was filed in July 2022 by currently and formerly detained individuals at GEO Group’s Mesa Verde and Golden State Annex facilities in California, also on allegations of being forced to perform labour for GEO Group for just $1 a day. This case is ongoing.
• In February 2023, civil rights groups, including ACLU and Asian Law Caucus (ALC), filed a class-action complaint against GEO Group on behalf of 82 detained persons who have allegedly been punished for taking part in a hunger strike. The lawsuit alleges that excessive punitive measures were used, including invasive pat-downs and time in solitary confinement. ​
• Another lawsuit was filed in March 2023, when seven current and former detainees at the same GEO-run Adelanto facility alleged they were poisoned by a chemical agent used to disinfect the premises during the COVID-19 pandemic. Detainees reported symptoms such as burning eyes, skin irritation and fainting.

• On July 30, 2024 the Washington State Department of Health filed a lawsuit against GEO over health inspectors being denied access to inspect the Tacoma ICE facility, alleging that the denial hinders their ability to ensure health and safety compliance. The inspector tried to enter the facility four times, and was denied access despite state legislation (HB 1470) granting authorities the right to conduct unannounced inspections. The Health Department reported receiving over 700 health complaints from individuals incarcerated at NWIPC since April 2023. Conditions within the facility continue to deteriorate, with detainees reporting poor hygiene, unsafe drinking water, and mistreatment. 

These are just but a few examples of ongoing and settled cases brought against GEO Group in recent years.