GEO Group kept up its Washington lobbying in the quarter before ICE bought three of its detention centers

By Staff Reporter

WASHINGTON — The GEO Group reported spending $340,000 on federal lobbying in the third quarter, the same amount it has reported in most quarters since early 2025, according to a disclosure posted Monday. The report lists contacts with the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Office of Management and Budget and both chambers of Congress.

Days after the quarter ended, the government became GEO’s buyer as well as its customer. In an Oct. 2 securities filing, GEO said it had sold its three-building Adelanto complex in California, with 2,644 beds, to the United States through DHS for $950 million, and that it expects to keep running the facilities under its existing ICE contract. GEO said it expects about $705 million in net proceeds and is in “an active process” to sell other company-owned facilities to ICE, with no definitive agreement or timeline. Bloomberg Law reported the sale.

Neither GEO’s own report nor its outside lobbyists’ reports mention the sale of facilities. They describe the issues in broader terms: homeland security and commerce-justice-science appropriations, ICE and “alternatives to detention,” the U.S. Marshals Service and the Bureau of Prisons, and the Fair Access to Banking Act, which deals with banks’ treatment of federal contractors.

Who reported GEO income

GEO’s in-house figure has barely moved: $350,000 and $340,000 in the first two quarters of 2025, then $340,000 and $340,000 in the last two, and $350,000 and $340,000 in the first half of 2026. Navigators Global, GEO’s largest outside firm, has reported $160,000 in each quarter this year.

One firm that reported GEO income earlier this year has not yet filed for the third quarter. Avant Bishop Washington & Black reported $40,000 in each of the first and second quarters; no third-quarter report from the firm had been posted early Thursday. Its reports have often come in late: its first- and second-quarter 2025 reports were posted in May and August. Checkmate Government Relations, which also lobbies for Binance, ended its GEO registration in the second quarter.

The questions in Congress

The sales have drawn scrutiny. In a letter this month, Reps. Pramila Jayapal and Emily Randall of Washington and 11 other congressional Democrats asked DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin and acting ICE Director David Venturella about plans to buy facilities run by GEO and CoreCivic, The Seattle Times reported. They wrote that a purchase “appears to be an attempt to circumvent oversight and accountability,” and asked how ICE would set prices and whether former GEO employees would recuse. Venturella previously worked for GEO, the paper noted, and border czar Tom Homan was once a GEO consultant.

GEO’s contract for the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma runs to Oct. 27, and an ICE request for proposals in August said the government was considering buying one or more detention sites, the Seattle Times reported. ICE also extended GEO’s contract for its Aurora, Colo., facility this month, CBS Colorado reported.

The Inquisitor emailed GEO, Navigators Global, Continental Strategy, State Federal Strategies, ICE and DHS on Thursday morning with questions about the filings and whether facility sales were among the issues lobbied. None had responded by publication time. This story will be updated with any responses.

Photo: The GEO Group’s headquarters in Boca Raton, Fla. Eflatmajor7th / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.