MAGA Inc.: The Prison Profiteers

While Donald Trump and his friends in Silicon Valley are betting heavily on artificial intelligence and crypto-technologies to make a quick buck from data mining, others are cashing in on the fact that this data mining also generates real world possibilities of making money in the bricks-and-mortar world. 

(Click here for the table of contents of MAGA Inc.: A Guide to Trump's World of Crypto Czars, Tech Titans and Prison Profiteers.) 

Notably prison companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group as well as private flight brokers like CSI Aviation have cashed in on the fact that the individuals tracked by Palantir are being rounded up and deported as per Trump’s election promises.

"I gave a free hand to our great ICE agents and let them do their jobs. These are brave people. We sent home nearly 1 million illegals during my first term, and we will far surpass that number," Trump told an election rally in Dubuque, Iowa, on September 19, 2023. "We will carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history."

At his January 2025 inauguration, Trump doubled-down on his campaign promises. “I will declare a national emergency at our southern border. All illegal entry will immediately be halted, and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places in which they came,” he said in his first speech.

"We believe our company faces an unprecedented opportunity at this time to play a role in supporting President Trump’s new administration policies,” George Zoley, the CEO of GEO Group, told investors on a February 27, 2025 earnings call. “We’ve taken several important steps to be prepared to meet that opportunity.”  

His sentiments echoed remarks by Damon Hininger, then-CEO of CoreCivic, on a February 11, 2025 earnings call. “I have worked at CoreCivic for 32 years, and this is truly one of the most exciting periods in my career with the company,” Hininger told investors.

The two companies immediately got ready to reactivate major prisons across the country from Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey, to California City, California, in order to profit from Trump’s plans.

In addition, CSI Aviation capitalized on Trump’s deportation agenda by enlisting its network of private charter airlines.

A Project on Government Oversight review of immigration-related contracts awarded in 2025 showed that CSI Aviation was awarded US$1.2 billion in contracts (a 238 percent increase over the previous year), GEO Group just over US$710 million, while CoreCivic received US$269 million in contracts, placing all three in the top five of ICE contractors.

Profiteering from Trump's deportation agenda is just the tip of the iceberg for these three companies - all three have also been accused of human rights abuse as well as inhumane living conditions in the detention centers, as we document in our profiles of these companies.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has eviscerated accountability mechanisms over ICE detention facilities by eliminating the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman as well as prohibiting surprise visits by members of Congress to check on the detention facilities.