CoreCivic sells four detention facilities to DHS for $1.6 billion
CoreCivic said its total revenue rose just over 27% compared with the same quarter last year, to $684.9 million. President and CEO Patrick Swindle told investors the company exceeded expectations in a period that included the government shutdown, helped in part by lower operating costs — meaning the business of detaining people is becoming cheaper — and by more people being placed in detention.
GEO Group reported $732.1 million in revenue, an increase of nearly $96 million, or 15%, over the same period last year, CEO George Zoley said, crediting contracts signed in 2025.
Neither company’s quarterly figure includes the $1.6 billion in net proceeds CoreCivic recorded after selling four of its facilities to the Department of Homeland Security. Swindle told investors the sales worked out to an average rate of $307,000 per bed. The transactions will not appear on CoreCivic’s books until next quarter, he said. Swindle described the sales as part of a wider strategy to meet President Trump’s goal of holding 100,000 people in detention at once, adding that CoreCivic reached a deal to continue operating the centers and hopes to build more. GEO Group said it is in talks to do the same.
The earnings, covering April through June, come as the U.S. holds almost 66,000 people in immigration detention, nearing record levels not seen since January, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a nonpartisan research center.
Both companies said they are finding revenue opportunities beyond detention walls. GEO Group said sales of GPS-tracking ankle monitors are rising under the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program contract it holds with ICE, which also covers smartwatches and the SmartLink phone app. Zoley told investors that ankle monitoring in particular will likely keep climbing now that Temporary Protected Status for Haitian immigrants has ended.
“Because of this new policy shift as to who will be subject to this immigration enforcement like … the Haitians, we could see a significant increase in the number of people in the ISAP program,” Zoley said, adding that “most of them, we believe, would be placed under the ankle monitoring supervision.” He noted that “the app is far less expensive than the ankle monitors.”
Member station WVXU in Ohio previously reported seeing Haitian migrants fitted with ankle monitors as they left meetings with ICE officials. GEO Group also drew more money from transportation and flight contracts with the government, which rose in line with more deportations, Zoley said.
The companies’ ties to the federal government extend beyond their contracts. Former GEO Group executive David Venturella is the acting director of ICE and told lawmakers in a recent letter that he has divested his GEO Group stock. White House border czar Tom Homan was a paid consultant for GEO Group before joining the government, and former Attorney General Pam Bondi lobbied for the company before her appointment.
President Trump also holds financial stakes in both companies, according to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics. An analysis of the president’s most recent financial disclosure by CREW last month found that his brokers have made 29 trades of private prison stocks since he returned to office, with the first purchases coming on the 10th day of his second term. The study put the total bought and sold in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, split between GEO Group and CoreCivic.