On immigration, the president is moving swiftly, cracking down on immigrants who entered the United States illegally.
The president signed a barrage ofexecutive orders and actionson his first day in office.
Now, under Trump, the flip has been switched back on again.
The industry anticipated as much.
The opportunity is Trump’s plans for the mass detention anddeportation of immigrants.
The stock prices of GEO and CoreCivic have soared by 105% and 50% since the 2024 election.
GEO says that about 182,500 people participate in that program daily, but that number could grow significantly.
About 11 million people are thought to be living in the US illegally.
It’s not an accident that the private prison companies wound up in this situation.
GEO and CoreCivic each gave $250,000 to Trump’s 2016 inauguration.
Pam Bondi, Trump’s new attorney general, lobbied for GEO as recently as 2019.
Individual executives at GEO and CoreCivic have made large donations to Trump and affiliated PACs as well.
She added, however, that expanding detention capacity isn’t something the administration can achieve overnight.
“It’s going to take time to build the infrastructure,” she said.
Trump’s plans won’t just take time they’ll also take a whole lot of money.
It may also pull in other agencies for assistance.
But ultimately it would need Congress to appropriate more money toward its project.
“That’s also a huge tax on taxpayers,” Tylek said.
“Their entire business is reliant on the government paying for more people to be incarcerated.”
Even if every dollar is approved, building new facilities takes time.
Whatever your position on immigration, the idea of criminal detention being a commercial enterprise is uncomfortable.
Back in 2016, private prison stocks crashed when Hillary Clinton had a good debate performance.
They need Trump, but Trump also needs them, and everyone knows it.
Emily Stewartis a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.
