ICE’s largest contractor seeks revenue for Ankle Monitor amid government shutdown
Geo Group, ICE’s largest contractor, made a discovery call Thursday to discuss the future of its business as President Donald Trump continues to ramp up U.S. immigration enforcement.
The company is showing an increase in the number of people stuck with loans, and more people are being monitored through phone apps and ankle bracelets. But the numbers aren’t as high as they seemed to think before Trump returned to office for a second term in January.
Geo said they are expected to “open approximately 100,000 or more lateral immigration detentions from ICEs with approximately 60,000 beds in use,” according to a filing with Alpha Seeking. The company expects more people to be considered for so-called “alternative confinement,” (ATD) schemes, which can include everything from an ankle app that needs to be worn at all times.
SmartLink, a smartphone app, is currently used by about 147,000 people, and about 30,000 have ankle monitors, according to Bloomberg. The tracking system is run by BI Inc., which started in 1978 as a cattle tracking service, according to the Washington Post. Geo said he expects to see more reliance on ankle guards in the future.
The comprehensive surveillance program (ISAP) is a subprogram within atd that applies to people who are considered a high risk of flight but are still allowed to live in the community rather than being held in a detention center. BI received a contract as expensive as $1 billion for ISEP. Geo said Thursday the new agreement allows 465,000 participants in the Isaka program over the next two years, up from 183,000 in the old contract.
One of the geo bottles was the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, who removed the policy that any contracts above $ 100,000 are renewed and approved by Noem personally. That new policy was blamed for FEMA’s slow response to the deadly floods in Texas back in July. Noem denied it, but the New York Times reported in August that other requests to spend the money were not received very quickly.
Geo explained that bottleneck as three reasons why “the pace of new arrest agreements has been slower than expected.” The second reason was the government shutdown, which meant that people awarding new contracts were more cautious. The third reason identified by geo is the lack of manpower to coordinate deportation efforts. Ice wants to double its employee count from about 10,000 to 20,000 people but Geo notes it is “time and staff intensive.”
“There are millions of people in the unencumbered booth,” Munger Founder and Executive Chairman George Zoley said in Realing Coll. “And there will be a desire to provide more information about where they are, what stage they are in their process in relation to their hearing process, and make sure that they reach their ears and if they don’t deserve to be heard to dismiss them.”
The geo group donated $1 million to Trump’s Refution Ulferect Campaign according to openescerets. The company has donated more than $500,000 to Trump’s committee, according to employees.
As Bloomberg notes, Geo has cut its earnings forecast, which sent the company’s stock down 10%. Geo Group saw its share price after the election day, from $ 14.18 on November 4, the day before the election, to $ 26.48 a few days after the election. The stock price closed at $15.13 on Friday.
“While the exact timing of the government’s actions, including the New Contract Awards is difficult to estimate, since the management team, we are focused on maintaining readiness effectively and taking future growth and continuing to allocate capital to improve the value of our shareholders,” said Zoley.
