Private Contractors

A few weeks later, CoreCivic signed a new contract with the Department of Homeland Security, which has said it’ll continue to use private contractors to house immigrants despite the Justice Department findings.

In two contributions this year, Boca Raton, Florida-based Geo gave a total of $225,000 to Rebuilding America Now, a pro-Trump super political action committee. The company also donated $200,000 to the Senate Leadership Fund, a Republican super PAC. Geo hired as lobbyists two former Sessions aides, David Stewart and Ryan Robichaux.

“Geo’s political activities focus entirely on promoting the use of public-private partnerships,” spokesman Pablo Paez said in an e-mail statement.

Jonathan Burns, a CoreCivic spokesman, said the company has provided “flexible, innovative solutions” to the challenges facing government. “CoreCivic does not draft, lobby for, promote or in any way take a position on proposals, policies or legislation that determine the basis or duration of an individual’s incarceration or detention,” he said.

Drug War

The private-prison industry sprang from the early days of President Ronald Reagan’s drug war. The 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act prescribed mandatory minimum sentences for small amounts of crack cocaine. Between 1980 and 2013, the federal prison population increased by almost 800 percent, according to the Justice Department, and the government turned to private contractors to alleviate overcrowding.

Today, the U.S. houses nearly 23,000 federal inmates in private prisons, or about 12 percent of the total. The agency predicted in August it could shrink to fewer than 14,200 by next year under the new policy.

Trump Rhetoric

As the drug war fades, private-prison companies have shifted to the immigrant-detention business, a trend that accelerated after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Laws on the books requiring mandatory detention of immigrants facing deportation have been interpreted more broadly. The government prosecuted more immigrants criminally for what used to be civil offenses.