Slavery by Another Name: How CoreCivic and GEO Group Get Rich Locking Up Immigrants
The 13th Amendment abolished slavery — with one exception. Two corporations have been exploiting that exception for decades. Under the Trump administration, business has never been better.
“The 13th Amendment abolished slavery. Except it didn’t — not entirely.”
The Exception That Ate the Rule
The 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1865, contains 31 words that most Americans learned in school: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States.”
That exception — five words buried in the middle of one of the most celebrated sentences in American history — is the legal foundation of an industry worth billions of dollars. It is the reason that incarcerated people across the United States work for pennies an hour or nothing at all. It is the reason that two private prison corporations — CoreCivic and GEO Group — have spent decades lobbying for harsher sentencing laws, stricter immigration enforcement, and longer detention periods. It is the reason that under the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda, those same two companies are experiencing what Wall Street analysts are calling a historic windfall.
The 13th Amendment abolished slavery. Except it didn’t — not entirely. And two Florida-headquartered corporations have been mining that exception ever since.
“The more people they lock up, and the longer those people stay locked up, the more money flows to the bottom line.”
The Business Model: More Bodies, More Money
To understand why CoreCivic and GEO Group are uniquely positioned to profit from the current immigration crackdown, you need to understand their business model — which is, in its essentials, breathtakingly simple.
The federal government pays these companies a fixed rate for every person they detain, every night they are detained. The rate varies by contract but typically runs between $60 and $150 per person per night for immigration detention facilities. (Reuters, 2025; ICE detention contract records via FOIA.) The companies’ costs — staff, food, utilities, healthcare — are largely fixed. The more people they lock up, and the longer those people stay locked up, the more money flows to the bottom line.
This is not incidental to the business. It is the business. CoreCivic and GEO Group do not have a financial interest in swift justice, efficient processing, or humane resolution of immigration cases. They have a financial interest in detention — as much of it as possible, for as long as possible, at the lowest possible cost per detainee.
The implications of that incentive structure are not subtle. A 2020 report by the Government Accountability Office found that ICE failed to follow its own detention standards at facilities operated by private contractors in a majority of inspections reviewed. (GAO-20-596, July 2020.) A 2022 report by the DHS Office of Inspector General documented inadequate medical care, unsanitary conditions, and inappropriate use of solitary confinement at multiple GEO Group and CoreCivic facilities. (DHS OIG-22-45, September 2022.) Detainees have died of preventable causes. Complaints of abuse have gone uninvestigated. Medical emergencies have gone untreated.
None of this has meaningfully affected the contracts. The money keeps flowing.
“They work not because they choose to but because the alternative is worse. They earn $1 a day for work that would cost the facility $15 to $20 an hour on the open market.”
Forced Labor: The Other Revenue Stream
The per-night detention fee is only part of the story. Inside many private detention facilities — and throughout the broader private prison system — detainees and inmates work. They clean, cook, do laundry, perform maintenance, and staff facility operations. In immigration detention facilities specifically, detainees are paid between $1 and $3 per day under ICE’s Voluntary Work Program — a program that multiple federal courts and investigators have found to be anything but voluntary. (Owino v. CoreCivic, 9th Circuit, 2021; Human Rights Watch, “Paying for the Privilege of Being Detained,” 2022.)
In practice, detainees who refuse to work report being threatened with solitary confinement, loss of privileges, or transfer to worse facilities. They work not because they choose to but because the alternative is worse. They earn $1 a day for work that would cost the facility $15 to $20 an hour on the open market.
This is not a historical aberration. This is the business model in operation — the 13th Amendment’s “punishment for crime” exception pressed into service for people who have not been convicted of any crime. Immigration violations are civil, not criminal offenses. The people detained in these facilities are not serving sentences. They are awaiting hearings. And while they wait, they work. And while they work, CoreCivic and GEO Group pocket the difference between $1 a day and the market rate for labor.
The California Supreme Court and multiple federal circuits have examined this practice. Legal challenges are ongoing. The money, in the meantime, continues to flow.
“Every mandatory minimum sentence is a guaranteed revenue stream. Every expansion of ICE detention authority is a new contract opportunity.”
The Lobbying Infrastructure: Buying the Laws That Fill the Beds
CoreCivic and GEO Group do not simply wait for the government to send them detainees. They actively work to ensure the supply. Over the past two decades, the two companies have spent tens of millions of dollars lobbying for policies that increase incarceration and detention rates — mandatory minimum sentences, stricter immigration enforcement, expanded detention authorities, and reduced access to alternatives to detention. (Justice Policy Institute, “Gaming the System,” 2011; OpenSecrets lobbying database, 2024.)
Between 2010 and 2023, GEO Group spent over $25 million on federal lobbying efforts. CoreCivic spent a comparable amount. Both companies are significant donors to political campaigns, with strong preference historically for candidates who favor tough-on-crime and tough-on-immigration positions. (OpenSecrets, Federal Election Commission filings.)
The investment pays off. Every mandatory minimum sentence is a guaranteed revenue stream. Every expansion of ICE detention authority is a new contract opportunity. Every policy that makes it harder to seek alternatives to detention — ankle monitors, community supervision, case management programs — is a competitor eliminated from the market.
In 2025, as the Trump administration announced its mass deportation agenda and began setting detention quotas that dwarfed anything seen in previous administrations, both companies’ stock prices surged. Analysts at Raymond James upgraded GEO Group to “strong buy.” CoreCivic shares climbed more than 40% in the weeks following the 2024 election. (Reuters, November 2024; Bloomberg, December 2024.) Wall Street understood immediately what the policy meant in practice: more bodies, more nights, more money.
“The growth is measured in detained human beings. The profit is measured in nights.”
The Trump Dividend
The numbers under the Trump administration’s second term are staggering. ICE detention capacity, which hovered around 34,000 beds at the end of the Biden administration, has been directed to expand to 100,000 beds or more — with the bulk of that expansion going to private contractors. (DHS budget documents, 2025; Reuters, January 2025.)
GEO Group holds contracts for over 100 facilities nationwide. CoreCivic operates dozens more. Together they control roughly half of all ICE detention capacity in the United States. As Stephen Miller’s detention quotas flow down through the system — as agents are incentivized to pick up more people, hold them longer, and process them more slowly — every night of detention translates directly to revenue for two Florida companies that have spent decades and tens of millions of dollars lobbying to make this moment possible.
CoreCivic reported $1.93 billion in total revenue in 2023. GEO Group reported $2.4 billion. Both figures are expected to rise significantly as expanded detention contracts take effect through 2025 and 2026. (CoreCivic 2023 Annual Report; GEO Group 2023 Annual Report.) The companies have already announced new facility expansions and contract extensions. Investors have been told to expect strong growth.
The growth is measured in detained human beings. The profit is measured in nights.
“The owners had no financial stake in keeping leased convicts alive. They were replaceable.”
The Continuum: From Plantation to Detention Center
It is worth being precise about the historical argument here, because it is sometimes dismissed as rhetorical overreach. It is not.
The 13th Amendment’s exception clause was not accidental. It was inserted deliberately, by legislators who understood exactly what it meant — that the labor system of the antebellum South could be preserved through the criminal justice system even after the formal abolition of chattel slavery. Within years of ratification, Southern states had developed the convict leasing system: arresting Black men for minor or fabricated offenses, convicting them in perfunctory proceedings, and leasing their labor to plantations, mines, and railroads. The prisoners worked under conditions that historians have described as worse than slavery — owners had no financial stake in keeping leased convicts alive the way they had in keeping enslaved people alive. They were replaceable. (Douglas Blackmon, “Slavery by Another Name,” 2008.)
The convict leasing system was eventually abolished — but the logic that produced it was not. It evolved into chain gangs, prison farms, and eventually the modern private prison industry. The through-line is direct: the state uses its coercive power to create a captive labor force, then transfers that force — or the revenue generated by housing it — to private entities who profit from its captivity.
The immigration detention system is the latest iteration of this logic, with one important distinction: the people inside it have not been convicted of any crime. They are being held, not punished. And yet the labor they perform under threat of punishment enriches private corporations by millions of dollars every year.
This is not hyperbole. This is the documented history of how American capitalism has repeatedly found ways to profit from the coerced labor of people with no power to refuse.
“Community supervision costs $17 per day. Detention costs $150. The difference is profit.”
What Accountability Would Look Like
The reform agenda is not complicated, though it is politically difficult. Advocates and policy experts have consistently called for the same set of changes: elimination of the ICE Voluntary Work Program; mandatory minimum standards for detention conditions with real enforcement mechanisms; a statutory ban on per-diem detention contracts that create financial incentives to maximize detention; expanded use of community supervision and alternatives to detention, which cost roughly $17 per day compared to $150 for detention and produce comparable appearance rates at immigration hearings. (American Immigration Council, “The Cost of Immigration Detention,” 2021; ACLU, “Alternatives to Immigration Detention,” 2023.)
None of these reforms are on the current administration’s agenda. The current administration’s agenda, in functional terms, is to expand the system as rapidly as possible, direct as many human beings through it as the logistics will allow, and ensure that the companies running the facilities are compensated accordingly.
Scott Jennings called the death of Nurul Amin Shah Alam a missed detail. Here is the larger detail being missed: the system that detained him, failed him, dumped him in the snow, and lied about it afterward is not a public safety system. It is a revenue system. It is a machine designed to generate billable nights. And it is operating exactly as designed.
CoreCivic and GEO Group are not aberrations. They are the destination that five words in the 13th Amendment have been pointing toward for 160 years: except as a punishment for crime.
Except they’re not even bothering with the crime part anymore.
Sources: GAO-20-596 (July 2020); DHS OIG-22-45 (September 2022); Owino v. CoreCivic, 9th Circuit (2021); Human Rights Watch, “Paying for the Privilege of Being Detained” (2022); Justice Policy Institute, “Gaming the System” (2011); Douglas Blackmon, “Slavery by Another Name” (2008); American Immigration Council, “The Cost of Immigration Detention” (2021); ACLU, “Alternatives to Immigration Detention” (2023); OpenSecrets federal lobbying database; CoreCivic 2023 Annual Report; GEO Group 2023 Annual Report; Reuters (November 2024); Bloomberg (December 2024).