Trump’s Border Czar Recently Consulted for Immigrant Detention Center Operator

One of President Donald Trump’s top immigration officials was recently paid an undisclosed amount to consult for a major immigrant jail operator that is poised to profit from the administration’s fascist immigration crackdown, new reporting finds.

Financial filings show that Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, consulted for GEO Group in the two years prior to his appointment in January, per The Washington Post.

The for-profit operator is one of the largest private prison companies in the U.S. and contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — the agency Homan headed for 18 months under Trump’s first term. GEO operates the vast majority of the immigrant jails in the U.S. (along with CoreCivic) and raked in hundreds of millions in funding from ICE contracts in 2021.

According to the filing, GEO paid Homan more than $5,000 for his consulting work. Because ethics rules allow officials to report within a range of values, it’s possible GEO paid Homan far more.

The consulting fees raise questions over whether the consulting amounts to a conflict of interest for Homan, who oversees deportations and border enforcement as border czar. The White House has denied wrongdoing and said that Homan will recuse himself from the government’s dealings with GEO.

Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats said that Homan’s consulting represents a “serious conflict of interest.”

“The GEO Group is a major private prison contractor whose largest source of revenue is contracts with ICE,” Sen. Dick Durbin (Illinois), the Senate Judiciary Committee’s top Democrat, told the Post. “This news raises even more questions, and the corruption concerns are too large to ignore.”

Durbin has recently spoken out against the Trump administration’s practice of detaining huge numbers of immigrants without due process or oversight after a visit to two GEO Group-managed prisons in Louisiana, where people like Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk were incarcerated by immigration officials over their pro-Palestine advocacy.

The prisons operated by GEO are notorious for abuse. Prisons managed by the $4 billion company have received complaints of neglect, assault, and other abuses, while the company’s cost-cutting measures involve such practices as paying incarcerated people less than $1 a day for labor.

GEO’s stock value doubled after Trump was elected, and the company is slated to benefit even more under the Trump administration. Homan has called for the number of beds in immigrant jails to nearly triple, from 34,000 to 100,000, while saying that mass deportation is “more important to this country than anything.”

Much of this expansion is expected to be carried out by GEO and CoreCivic.

Per the Post, GEO’s chief executive, David Donahue, has bragged to investors that the company faces an “unprecedented opportunity” with the new administration.

The Trump administration has already awarded GEO with hefty contracts to reopen two facilities that had previously shut down. GEO estimates that the contract for a Newark detention center, awarded in February, will be worth $1 billion over its 15-year term, and will generate $60 million in revenue for the company each year. Another contract for a facility in Michigan will bring in $70 million in revenues annually, the company estimates.

Meanwhile, Republicans have proposed a boost of $150 billion to immigration enforcement in their marquee reconciliation bill, including $59 billion for immigration detention and transportation, meaning that GEO and other companies could be poised for a major windfall.