Overview:
GEO Group is one of the largest private prison and immigration detention contractors in the country. The company has maintained a longstanding contract with the Merced County Probation Department to provide re-entry services for individuals transitioning out of incarceration.
A planned job fair in Merced by the GEO Group, one of the largest private prison and immigration detention contractors in the country, sparked community backlash – including plans for a protest.
While GEO Group does not operate detention centers in Merced County, the Aug. 13 job fair at the Hoffmeister Center in downtown Merced drew immediate concern from residents and immigrant advocates, who say the company’s record of profiting from mass incarceration and immigration detention is at odds with the values of the community.
“GEO is not welcome in this community,” said Daniel Garibay, one of the protest organizers. “They’re causing harm to this community by managing and creating new detention centers, or how I like to call it – concentration camps.”
The Merced FOCUS inquired with the GEO Group about the planned protest, the company’s operations, and the purpose of the job fair, but did not receive a response before publication.
The backlash became apparent when the Merced County Hispanic Chamber of Commerce shared and then deleted social media posts promoting the job fair last week.
The organization released a statement on Aug. 5 saying it was unaware of the company’s operations.
“The Merced County Hispanic Chamber of Commerce has no affiliation with GEO Services, Inc., did not co-host the event, and did not receive any form of compensation related to this post,” the statement says. “Our sole intention was to share what we believed was an opportunity to support local employment, which is a core part of our mission to foster economic growth in Merced County.”
An internet search of the event also produced a 2024 posting from the UC Merced Community Engagement Center encouraging students to volunteer at an August 2024 GEO Group re-entry job fair. Officials with the university’s communications department did not respond to inquiries about the posting by publication time.
Since the 2024 election, GEO Group has been under the microscope for its ties to President Donald Trump and its business model.
Widespread and, at times, violent immigration sweeps have become a hallmark of Trump’s second term. They kicked off prior to his inauguration in Kern County and continued in Los Angeles throughout the summer, sparking waves of protests.
Additionally, the ballooning budget for Immigration and Customs Enforcement has raised concerns over GEO Group’s influence in communities where the company operates. The company’s political action committee was also the first to max out donations to Trump’s campaign, according to the organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
GEO Group and other companies reported unexpected revenue gains as a result of Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Merced is home to a large and diverse immigrant population. About 26.7% of the county’s 286,000 residents were born in another country, according to DataUSA.
The largest share of immigrants in Merced County comes from Mexico at 58%. The county also has sizable refugee and immigrant communities, including Punjabi Sikh and Hmong families, many of whom arrived decades ago and have built strong roots here.
What is GEO Group?
According to its website, GEO Group deals in every aspect of detention facilities – from designing, financing, and development, plus the delivery of support services. That also goes for immigration processing centers and their community re-entry centers. GEO also provides in-custody rehabilitation, post-release support, electronic monitoring, and community-based programs.
While Merced County’s contract focuses on re-entry and supervision services, the GEO Group’s broader business model relies heavily on managing private prisons and immigration detention centers for ICE, which accounted for about 43% of its 2023 revenue.
A revenue report from 2024 says the company invested $9 million of a previously announced $70 million investment “to strengthen our capabilities to deliver expanded detention capacity, secure transportation, and electronic monitoring services to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the federal government.”
A search of the company’s career website shows hundreds of job openings at ICE processing centers and other jails around the country.
GEO Group in Merced
However, in Merced, only four job postings are currently listed for their re-entry program, including case managers, youth monitors, and program facilitators, with pay ranging from approximately $20 to $28 per hour.
The GEO Group has maintained a longstanding contract with the Merced County Probation Department under the subsidiary B.I. Correctional Services, Inc., to provide re-entry services, including GPS monitoring and a day reporting center.
The programs offer job training, behavioral therapy, and support for individuals transitioning out of incarceration.
From 2018 to 2024, Merced County spent about $4.6 million on its contract with GEO for the adult day reporting center, county records show.
“The way this company is able to get profits and grow bigger is literally by incarcerating mostly people of color and immigrants,” Garibay said. “They do work for re-entry programs. The only way to do this re-entry work is for people who they locked up.”
Protesters plan to gather outside the job fair from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesday to voice their opposition to what they see as a quiet normalization of GEO’s presence in the region, Garibay said.
