The Geo Group, the largest single private contractor to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), said it was building out its surveillance business to be able to monitor hundreds of thousands or millions more immigrants than it already does.
The Geo Group, a private prison corporation and parent company of BI Inc, has contracted with Ice for nearly 20 years to manage the agency’s electronic monitoring program. It currently tracks approximately 186,000 immigrants using devices such as ankle monitors, smart watches and a facial recognition app, according to public Ice data. Due to increasing demand from Donald Trump’s administration, which has promised mass deportations, company executives said that they expect that number to grow past its previous peak of 370,000 to 450,000 immigrants within the next year. The remarks were made during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call on Thursday morning.
“A little over two years ago, the ISAP contract utilization peaked at approximately 370,000,” George Zoley, the executive chair of the Geo Group, said on an earnings call on Thursday, referring to the agreement between Ice and Geo. “Returning to that utilization level would generate incremental revenues of $250m and even more if the contract exceeds the prior peak of utilization.”
While the company is still ramping up its production of additional GPS units in anticipation of an expanded Ice contract, executives said they are able to monitor “several hundreds of thousands” of people and are trying to position themselves to be able to monitor millions of people. Zoley said that the Geo Group, and its competitor in running private prisons and detention centers, Core Civic, are in expedited discussions with Ice to expand current contracts for detention facilities as well as electronic monitoring.
“It’s a fluid situation, but it’s picking up pace, if I may say,” he said. “We’ve gone from conceptual proposals … to substantive pricing and operational discussions. But the procurement process is moving at a speed that is unprecedented. We’ve never seen anything like this before.”
The company’s vast electronic monitoring program was instituted as an alternative to detention in 2004 and has been entrusted to Geo group subsidiary BI Inc since then. Many of those forced to wear the ankle monitors, designed and produced by BI, have complained the devices can overheat, shock them or have been put on too tightly. The company has pitched its smart watch location tracker and smart phone app, called SmartLink, as a lower-level of surveillance than the monitor. Executives said on Thursday’s earnings call, however, that they expect a return to a reliance on the physical ankle monitors.
“I think there is going to be a preference in the beginning for the ankle monitors which represents the high-security level of monitoring,” Zoley said.
Though the company has yet to receive an indication from Ice on when the agency expects to reissue a new contract for the electronic monitoring program, called the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program, executives say they believe the agency is focused on expanding the number of people being tracked through the existing program. The Geo Group is investing $16m into building out its inventory of ankle monitors in order to “be in a position to scale up the federal government’s utilization of ISAP by several hundreds of thousands to upwards of several millions of participants as required”, according to Zoley.
after newsletter promotion
Company executives also said they believed that under the Laken Riley Act, which requires the detention of undocumented immigrants charged with violent crimes or theft, those detained will be required to be monitored under the ISAP program “indefinitely” if there is not enough capacity in detention facilities. The executives signaled their intent to expand the company’s surveillance program so that it could monitor an estimated 7 to 8 million people on the non-detained docket who entered the US through non-authorized pathways and then are released into the US. They are also building up capabilities to monitor the estimated 9.5 to 10 million people in the US who are otherwise undocumented in anticipation of Ice’s requests.
“Given the size of the population our view is in addition to increased detention capacity … the Laken Riley Act will require significant ramp-up of electronic monitoring services to ensure proper trafficking of persons on non-detained docket and their compliance of the requirements of their immigration court proceedings,” Zoley said.
