President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement campaign has produced a surge in profits and stock prices for the nation’s two largest private prison operators, Geo Group and CoreCivic, as federal contracts signed last year to detain people arrested for living in the U.S. unlawfully generate new business.
Geo Group reported net income from operations of $38.3 million in the first quarter of 2026, nearly double the figure from a year earlier, according to the company’s financial statements. CoreCivic’s profit grew 50% to $37.9 million over the same period.
Shares of Geo Group have risen 82% and CoreCivic 51% year to date, outpacing not only technology stocks such as Alphabet and Qualcomm but also energy companies including Chevron and Exxon Mobil that have been buoyed by the war in Iran this year.
“People are starting to recognize that the revenues are going to be going up this year because of what the federal government did last year,” said Joe Gomes, senior research analyst at Noble Capital Markets.
In a statement in May 2025, Geo Group Chief Executive George Zoley called 2025 “the most successful period for new business wins in our company’s history” and said he expected 2026 “to be very active as well.”
CoreCivic CEO Patrick Swindle said in February that he expected increased demand from federal, state and local governments in 2026.
The prison stocks remain below peaks they reached in 2016 after then-candidate Trump said at a televised town hall that “we can do a lot of privatizations and private prisons — it seems to work a lot better.” Once in office during his first term, his administration called off a federal plan to scale back the use of private prisons.
MSI previously reported that Trump’s tax and spending cuts bill paid for ICE expansion. Read that article.
Shares of both companies hit year-to-date lows in mid-February after Trump administration contracts failed to immediately translate into robust revenue. CoreCivic said in recent filings that getting facilities staffed and operating can require three to six months of spending.
The number of people in ICE detention fell to about 51,000 as of April from a high of about 60,000 in January, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a government data tracker at Syracuse University, as enforcement slowed following public opposition and policy adjustments.
In January, immigration raids that detained a 5-year-old and a daycare worker sparked public backlash. Two ICE protesters in Minnesota were shot and killed by federal agents. Trump told advisers that the tactics went too far and said he wanted more attention on arresting “bad guys” and less chaos in U.S. cities. In March, he fired then-Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
CoreCivic told investors that it had experienced a downturn in demand due to “enforcement redeployments and overall strategy adjustments within DHS” but anticipated increased demand going forward.
Trump’s new homeland security secretary, former Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin, a close Trump ally, has told associates his marching orders are to lower the agency’s profile and avoid bad press ahead of November elections, according to the Wall Street Journal.
CoreCivic added more than 2,500 detainees at prisons in California and Oklahoma by the end of the first quarter and began admitting detainees to its Leavenworth, Kan., Midwest Regional Reception Center in March. Geo Group has agreed to house thousands of detainees at company prisons in New Jersey, Michigan and Georgia that were not in use and has reactivated an ICE processing center in California. The company is also expanding its business of monitoring people who are not in detention for ICE using ankle bracelets and other methods.
Geo Group and CoreCivic also contract with state and local corrections programs and the U.S. Marshals, but contracts with ICE represent a significant share of their business. Geo Group said it is planning for at least $138 million in capital expenditures in 2026. CoreCivic plans at least $115 million, including $40 million to prepare currently unused prisons for use and getting others ready “to quickly accept residential populations if opportunities arise.”
There are an estimated 14 million immigrants living in the U.S. unlawfully, according to the Pew Research Center. In addition to the roughly 51,000 in ICE detention, about 180,000 people are under community supervision through the agency’s Intensive Supervision Appearance Program, according to ICE. Zoley said in a November 2024 earnings call that Geo Group has the capacity to monitor several million people through the program.