By Douglas MacMillan, Aaron Schaffer — Trump’s border czar earned consulting fees from immigrant detention firm
A leader of the Trump administration’s effort to detain and deport millions of immigrants recently earned consulting fees froma detention center company that is expected to benefit financially from the crackdown, according to a federal ethics filing.
Before he joined the administration, border czar Tom Homan earned an undisclosed amount in fees consulting for a division of the GEO Group, one of two companies that operates the vast majority of the nation’s immigrant detention facilities, according to the disclosure, which was released last week.
The filing, which has not been previously reported, did not specify what work Homan performed. The document said GEO paid him more than $5,000 during the two years preceding his government appointment in January. Ethics rules do not require any more specific disclosure, and the amount Homan received could be far higher.
Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said in an emailed statement that Homan abides by “the highest ethical standards” and that he gave up a “successful private career” to work as a high-ranking government official.
She citeda statement Homan issued in response to reports about his consulting work in December, when he said he would recuse himself “from any involvement, discussion, input, or decision of any future government contracts that may be awarded.”
“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement initially declined to comment. After this story was posted online, the agency issued a statement, saying, “Tom Homan has never been involved in any contract discussions or decisions at ICE since being named border czar.” Nonetheless, Homan’‘s recent income from GEO raises questions about whether his private sector work is influencing the Trump push to round up and deport immigrants – an effort that relies heavily on private detention facility operators that contract with ICE, according to a government ethics expert as well as opponents of Trump’s immigration agenda.
“The GEO Group is a major private prison contractor whose largest source of revenue is contracts with ICE,” said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, who has previously raised ethics concerns about Trump administration’s ties to the company. “This news raises even more questions, and the corruption concerns are too large to ignore.”
GEO did not respond to requests for comment about Homan’s work for the firm.
Homan’s reported income is also an example of a broader pattern of revolving-door arrangements involving former ICE officials who obtained jobs in the detention industry. Homan previously served in the first Trump administration as acting director of ICE.
In his return to government,Homan has championed a dramatic expansion of the nation’s immigrant detention system, which he says needs at least 100,000 beds to accommodate the large numbers of noncitizens the administration plans to deport. ICE’s detention budget allows for 41,500 beds, according to statements by agency officials.
Much of the increased capacity is expected to come through new contracts with GEO and its main competitor, CoreCivic, which together own at least 16 idle facilities that they have said they hope to reopen as immigrant detention centers, according to transcripts of analysts calls, investor filings and contract applications.Already this year, the government has awarded GEO contracts to reopen facilities in New Jersey and Michigan, in deals the company says will generate a combined annual revenue of $130 million.
GEO chief executive David Donahue told investors this month that the contracts are just the beginning of what he expects to be an “unprecedented opportunity” to expand the business, which, in addition to detention centers, operates an air carrier for deportation flights and the nation’s largest program for surveilling non-detained immigrants. The Boca Raton, Florida-based company’s stock has surged 90 percentsince election night.
House Republicans last week approved a tax and spending package that included $59 billion for immigration detention and transportation over five years – several times the current annual budget for detention. The legislation must still pass the Senate.
“We do believe that as the funding streams become defined, we are very well positioned to help [ICE] meet their mission, and we’re excited about the second half of the year because of that,” Donahue said on a May 7 call with Wall Street analysts.
Homan, a tough-talking former police officer and Border Patrol agent, served as acting ICE director in the first Trump administration, when he became the architect of the “zero tolerance” policy that separated thousands of children from their parents. Trump picked him for the permanent ICE leadership role, but his nomination never reached a vote on the Senate floor, and he retired in 2018 after telling friends and co-workers that he felt increasingly sidelined by his boss, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, The Washington Post reported at the time.
Homan then became a Fox News contributor and joined the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank based in Washington. He founded Homeland Strategic Consulting and played a role in Border911, a nonprofit group that held events and published materials claiming President Joe Biden’s agenda had created a “crisis” at the southern border.
Homan’s recent ethics disclosure, which he signed in February but was released to The Post on Friday, said he worked for GEO Care, a division of the GEO Group that includes rehabilitation services for people in detention facilities and electronic monitoring of people who have been released, according to its website. The division accounts for 25 percentof GEO’s annual revenue, according tocorporate filings.
Homan’s ethics statementwas released by the Department of Homeland Security and stated his position as “Border Czar, Department of Homeland Security” – contrary to how he has described his chain of command in media interviews.
“I’ll be reporting directly to the president,” Homan said in an interview with a local TV station shortly after getting the job. “I’ll be in the White House.”
Richard Painter, the chief White House ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration, said in an interview that he has long argued people should not be hired to government roles where they are overseeing the regulation of the industries where they previously worked.
“Was he being consulted to line up these contracts with the Trump administration right before he entered the Trump administration?” Painter asked. Congress “should be asking these questions,” he said.
GEO and CoreCivic and have long benefited from a close relationship with the federal agencies that issue them contracts, said Jason Houser, who was ICE chief of staff from 2021 to 2023. As the agency has increased detention space over the years, its formerpersonnel often find jobs in the private sector, he said.
There is no profit in deportations, Houser said – only in detention. “And that’s where the revolving door allows for individuals to cash in,” he said.
An ICE spokesperson declined to comment.
At least three top GEO executives, Matthew Albence, Daniel Bible and Daniel Ragsdale, previously held leadership roles at ICE, according to their corporate bios and social media profiles.
“The connections of top-level officials to the companies directly profiting from ICE detention expansion is illustrative of the perverse influence the private prison industry has over how our taxpayer dollars are spent,” Jesse Franzblau, associate director of policy for the National Immigrant Justice Center, a nonprofit immigrant rights organization, said in an emailed statement.
Attorney General Pam Bondi previously lobbied on behalf of GEO in 2019, according to lobbying filings. This month, Durbin called on Bondi to recuse herself from any issue involving immigration enforcement, citing reports that her Justice Department has directed agency resources to Trump’s mass deportation agenda.
Gates McGavick, a spokesman for the DOJ, said the idea that Bondi would not participate in enforcing immigration laws is an “unserious expectation” that is “generally unsupported by precedent or ethics rules.”
Through its political donations arm, the GEO Group gave $500,000 to Trump’s inauguration this year.
– – –
Marianne LeVine contributed to this report.
