Mother Jones broke
While both ICE and GEO have stated the emails show routine conversations between government agencies and their contractors, private-prison-industry critics are sure to seize on the disclosures as proof the company exerts far too much influence over the federal government.
GEO is the largest ICE contractor in America and holds nearly a half-billion dollars in contracts. Roughly one-fourth of GEO's entire revenue comes from running ICE detention centers. A full third of ICE detainees occupy a GEO jail. Before Donald Trump took office, GEO's stock was falling thanks to a Barack Obama executive order banning the use of for-profit prisons at the federal level. GEO then (allegedly illegally) donated quite a lot of money to the Trump campaign and Attorney General Jeff Sessions then rescinded the Obama-era ban. GEO also moved its yearly company conference to the Trump National Doral golf course in 2017.
Meanwhile, the California State Assembly in 2017 passed a bill, AB 103, that significantly restricted the ability of for-profit prison contractors to operate in that state. In response, GEO, like most major corporations, compiled a legal brief analyzing how the new bill would impact the company's business. (The results did not seem good.)
The remarkable part, however, is that GEO then passed its legal analysis to ICE. In the email dump, the government redacted most of the names of GEO employees in the file. However, one name was not removed: Adam Hasner, GEO's executive vice president of business development.
Hasner served as a Florida state representative from 2002 to 2010 and at one point was the House's deputy majority leader. He was appointed to that position by then-Speaker of the House Marco Rubio. Hasner then ran for U.S. Congress in 2012 in Florida's 22nd District but lost to Democrat Lois Frankel.
Hasner's name appears to have been left unredacted in the email cache by mistake. He sent GEO's legal filing to ICE on June 22, 2017:
Immigration and Customs Enforcement
"No objections," an unnamed GEO "Senior Vice President for Business
Emails show that ICE employees — including principal legal adviser Tracey Short and her deputy, Mike P. Davis — then ran GEO's legal briefing up the ladder to higher-ranked officials, including ICE director Thomas Homan, members of the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the General Counsel, and the top aide to John Kelly, who was then DHS head. (Short asked Kelly to bring up the California issue with Sessions.) In emails, officials noted that the California bill would pose "difficulties" for GEO moving forward.
Speaking with Mother Jones at the end of the week, GEO and ICE stated they had done nothing wrong. GEO representatives said ICE had asked for the company's legal briefing, and that the company routinely communicates with its "government customers." ICE meanwhile stated, "Regular communication between personnel at various levels related to detention services may be necessary and is entirely appropriate.”As a CA law reining in for-profit immigrant detention neared enactment, GEO Group—a private prison company and Trump donor—sent a memo to the Trump Admin outlining how to argue the law was illegal. Trump’s DOJ later sued. 2/2 pic.twitter.com/FRGrEfXUUp
— Democracy Forward (@DemocracyFwd) December 7, 2018
This is not the first time this month that GEO has been accused of improperly greasing the political wheels. The company — which has been repeatedly alleged to have abused immigrant detainees in its facilities — recently hired Joe Negron, the outgoing president of the Florida Senate, to serve as its chief lawyer. Negron has accepted large GEO campaign donations in the past and overseen a chamber that passed bills beneficial to GEO. Negron will now run a GEO legal team that recently threatened to sue civil rights activists for libel. (The American Civil Liberties Union called those threats laughable.) In a statement to New Times, the civil rights group Dream Defenders said it felt GEO's hiring of Negron was, flatly, "corrupt."
