ICE removed detainee protections after private outreach from top contractor

When U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was revising the federal standards that govern immigration detention centers, one of its top contractors privately asked for changes that could benefit its business, according to a person briefed on the discussions.

Geo Group, which oversees more than a dozen ICE detention facilities, has faced lawsuits in three states alleging it violates minimum-wage laws by paying some immigrant detainees $1 a day to work. The company maintains that the work is voluntary and that it operates the program at the direction of the government.

Geo asked that ICE remove lines saying contractors needed to follow state and local laws around the treatment of detainees and that ICE amend language to support its legal position in these cases, the person said, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. The company also asked that the standards specify that detainees are not employees of the facilities where they work.

The new national detention standards, which ICE posted to its website Monday, include some of Geo’s requested changes. The document says detainees are not employees “and are not entitled to wages or benefits under applicable wage laws or labor regulations.”

The revised rules no longer say detainees must be paid at least $1 per day, and no longer include several references to contractors having to comply with state or local laws.

ICE standards are the key rules that govern the conditions of detention centers, where hundreds of thousands of people are held each year. The policies, which ICE enforces through its contracts with private companies and local governments, cover a wide range of facility operations, including how body cavity searches must be conducted as well as when detainees should be placed into solitary confinement.

Geo’s input in the new standards, which has not been previously reported, highlights the ICE contractor’s influence over the agency that is both its regulator and, corporate filings show, its biggest customer.

Two of the Trump administration’s top immigration officials — border czar Tom Homan and ICE’s acting director, David Venturella — previously worked for Geo Group, prompting Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) to question in a letter last month “whether ICE enforcement priorities are being driven by the financial interests of politically connected detention contractors.”

As the administration has ramped up arrests of immigrants, it has relied on Geo to help it significantly expand the nation’s capacity for holding ICE detainees. Advocates for immigrants and some state regulators say poor oversight at many of these facilities has led to the mistreatment of migrants.

This month, New Jersey sued Geo for refusing to allow state health inspectors full access to its Delaney Hall facility, in Newark, where the state says detainees have staged hunger strikes to protest being fed spoiled or rotten food and not being given access to basic hygiene products. Geo’s lawyers have said in court filings that only ICE can grant state inspectors access to the facility.

In the new standards, ICE said part of the goal of the revisions was to “reduce the burden on our detention operators.” At least one other detention contractor, CoreCivic, was consulted on the new standards, the person said. It’s unclear whether CoreCivic offered input.

“As part of the revision process, ICE consulted with a variety of stakeholders, including facility operators responsible for implementing the standards,” Lauren Bis, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement. “ICE considered that input alongside operational, legal, and policy requirements when making a final decision on the standards.”

Ryan Gustin, a CoreCivic spokesman, said that the company is sometimes asked by government partners for input on standards but that “ultimately, government officials decide on the standards and policies they develop and enforce.”

Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, said Homan adheres to federal ethics and conflict-of-interest rules. Geo Group did not respond to requests for comment.

It’s not uncommon for federal agencies to solicit feedback on policy changes from the industries they regulate, said Steve Schooner, a professor of government procurement law at George Washington University.

But typically, these discussions are done through a comment period that is open to businesses, advocacy groups, and other members of the public, he said. ICE did not hold a public comment period on the new standards.

“The reason we do public commenting is because there are various stakeholders,” Schooner said. ICE’s contractors, he added, “are probably not the best voice to represent the people who are being detained.”

Venturella, who was picked to lead ICE last month, is a former senior executive at Geo Group, where he earned millions of dollars overseeing the company’s detention business, corporate filings show. He worked as an executive at Geo from 2012 to 2023 and as a paid consultant for Geo through Jan. 31, 2025, the company said in a filing.

Venturella joined DHS as a senior adviser less than two weeks later, and was granted a waiver from a federal ethics rule that generally bars government employees from working on contracts awarded to their former employers for one year, the Washington Post reported last year, based on interviews and documents.

DHS declined a request to share this waiver, arguing that doing so would jeopardize the privacy of a government employee.

Geo Group and CoreCivic each donated $500,000 to Donald Trump’s presidential inaugural fund in December 2024, election spending data shows. A Geo Group subsidiary, Geo Reentry Services, has contributed $2 million to MAGA Inc., a Trump-aligned super-PAC, since last October, the records show.

Gustin said CoreCivic has consistently contributed to inauguration events for both Democrats and Republicans.

New versions of ICE standards go into effect gradually, as they become incorporated into new or modified contracts. At least one new detention center in Appleton, Minn., already has agreed to follow the 2026 rules, federal procurement records show.

It’s unclear how the revisions would help Geo fend off legal challenges to its $1-a-day work program, said Jacqueline Stevens, the founding faculty director of Northwestern University’s Deportation Research Clinic. Federal law and state laws define employees broadly as people who work for pay, she says, and ICE cannot override those laws by changing its contractual standards.

“ICE cannot magically wipe out those protections,” Stevens said.

ICE previously has made two revisions to the standards under Trump, and each time critics accused the agency of weakening protections for immigrant detainees. Revisions in 2019 removed the mandatory minimum ratio of toilets per detainee, as well as a line that banned the use of “hog-tying” or unnecessarily tight restraints.

The 2026 standards added some protections for detained immigrants, including an effort to expand access to language translation services, stricter rules around who can be put into solitary confinement, and a requirement that facilities alert ICE when they cannot accommodate the medical needs of any detainee.

ICE also specified in the new standards that facilities do not have the right to refuse any person that the agency decided to detain.

One of Geo’s recommendations, which proposed stipulating that the government would reimburse contractors up to $100 million for legal losses associated with wage lawsuits, was not reflected in the new standards, the person familiar with the discussions said.