Under fire from activists, Geo Group funnels donations to Florida Republicans

One of the country’s biggest private prison companies, based in Boca Raton, has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars supporting Republican candidates in Florida’s midterm elections, amid accusations that the company’s past giving hasn’t complied with campaign finance law.

A Geo Group subsidiary donated $125,000 to New Republican PAC, a super PAC supporting Gov. Rick Scott’s Senate bid, according to a review of campaign finance reports by the South Florida Sun Sentinel. The company’s CEO and founder, George Zoley, along with his wife, contributed $78,600 to another Scott-affiliated committee, the Rick Scott Victory Fund.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Adam Putnam hauled in $67,000 from the Geo Group PAC and the Zoleys, while his primary opponent, U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis, has received $5,000 from the company’s PAC. On Wednesday, the Friends of DeSantis PAC received another $50,000 from Geo, along with $50,000 from Zoley, according to the statewide political committee’s website.

Geo Group is facing a complaint filed with the Federal Election Commission that a $225,000 contribution made in 2016 by a company subsidiary to a pro-Trump Super PAC violated a ban on political contributions. The company maintains that its political giving conforms with all state and federal laws.

Geo Group also heavily supported U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio’s Senate bid in 2016, giving tens of thousands of dollars to his campaign and a super PAC supporting him.

The decisions politicians make in Washington and Tallahassee could have a big effect on the company’s bottom line as it seeks to gain more lucrative contracts for private prisons and detention facilities.

Dream Defenders, a Miami-based civil rights group aligned with the Black Lives Matter movement, has targeted Geo Group, seeking to make donations from private prison operators politically toxic. Activists say putting a profit motive into corrections has led to people being incarcerated who shouldn’t be. They’ve staged regular protests calling attention to Geo Group’s role in President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Democrats have gotten money from Geo Group in the past, albeit in smaller amounts than Republicans. Nelson received $8,000 in 2006 and $5,000 in 2010 from Geo’s PAC, but none since then, according to the Sun Sentinel review. U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-West Delray, received $2,000 in March, campaign finance records show.

In the past 18 years, Geo has given nearly $8.8 million with $5.6 million going to Republicans and $1.3 million to Democrats, according to the National Institute on Money in Politics.

But as pressure mounts, Democrats are shunning the company’s money.

Four of the five Democratic candidates for governor — Andrew Gillum, Gwen Graham, Chris King and Philip Levine — signed the Dream Defenders’ pledge at a debate in June not to accept political donations from private prison companies. A campaign spokeswoman for Jeff Greene says he also opposes private prisons and will not be accepting any contributions from the industry. Greene, a latecomer to the race, did not participate in the June debate.

In operation since 1984, Geo Group is the second-largest for-profit prison company in the country, owning or managing 139 prisons and other detention and correctional facilities,totaling about 96,000 beds. Those facilities include five private prisons in Florida, along with the 700-bed Broward Transitional Center, an immigration detention facility in Pompano Beach for “low-level” detainees.

President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy that resulted in children being separated from their families at the border has only heaped more scrutiny on the role private corrections companies have played in supporting the administration’s immigration measures.

In a statement, Pablo E. Paez, executive vice president of corporate relations for the Geo Group, said the company’s facilities don’t house unaccompanied children or children who were separated from their families under Trump’s zero-tolerance crackdown.

“Our company plays absolutely no role in passing criminal justice or immigration laws and has never advocated for or against any criminal justice, sentencing or immigration policies,” he said.

Trump’s election has been good for Geo Group’s bottom line. During Barack Obama’s presidency, the Justice Department announced it would begin phasing out its contracts with private prison operators for federal prisons.

Trump reversed that policy, and his immigration crackdown has led to a surge in people being held at privately run immigration detention facilities.

Geo Group makes more money than any other company from Immigration and Customs Enforcement contracts, hauling in nearly $471 million in ongoing ICE contracts as of July 5, according to a report by the investigative reporting website Sludge.

Geo Group has sought to deflect public scrutiny on its business, and its annual report on file with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission stresses that public resistance to private prisons could pose a “material adverse effect on our business.”

Earlier this month, Geo issued a “cease-and-desist demand” letter to the Dream Defenders, accusing the civil rights group of posting “false and defamatory” statements on its website. The Dream Defenders dismissed the claim as “laughable, at best” in its response, and the American Civil Liberties Union defended the group in a posting on its website.

A 70-plus year old federal law prohibits federal contractors who stand to profit off the political process from giving directly to campaigns, but companies have a variety of avenues to get around those restrictions, said Frances Hill, a University of Miami expert on campaign finance law.

“The law is hopelessly behind the practice,” she said. “The entrenched interests at the federal and state levels in both parties are now so powerful it’s going to take a huge shift in the nature and strength of the political will to put smaller donors at the heart of campaign finance.”

Employees of federal contractors are allowed to donate to campaigns from their personal funds, according to the FEC’s website. Geo’s political action committee is funded through voluntary, nonpartisan employee contributions, Paez said.

In 2016, the Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint accusing a Geo Group subsidiary of violating federal campaign finance law by donating money to Rebuilding America Now, a pro-Trump super PAC that was chaired by Scott, the investigative website Maplight reported. The complaint is pending before the FEC.

When complaints are filed, the FEC is often ineffectual and slow to respond, Hill said.

Geo Group maintains the donations are legal because they were made by a subsidiary that doesn’t presently do business with the federal government.

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