By Ross Kerber
Feb 9 (Reuters) - A set of Catholic investors said on Monday private-prison operator GEO Group has rejected a shareholder vote designed to shed light on alleged human rights violations in its operation of ICE detention facilities as part of U.S. President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown.
The government contractor has become one of the biggest benefactors in Trump's expansion of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, including operating a fast-growing detention center in Southern California. Complaints of poor treatment, including dismal sleeping conditions and a lack of fresh air at facilities run by GEO and others, have sparked protests against the administration as it ramps up detentions and pushes for mass deportations.
A group of social activist investors led by Jesuit priests said GEO rejected a proposed shareholder vote to review its human-rights conduct, ended talks on facility visits and reduced its reporting on human rights.
"The fact that the company isn't transparent with us, that raises red flags. Does it have something to hide?" asked Bryan Pham, a Jesuit priest who leads the investors' talks with GEO.
GEO said in an emailed statement that it "has had ongoing engagements with a broad group of shareholders for several decades. Our company’s disclosures are constantly evolving, informed by these long-standing broad shareholder engagements, and are developed in compliance with our legal obligations as a federal government contractor."
GEO, based in Boca Raton, Florida, is one of the largest operators of detention centers for ICE, which accounted for 41.5% of GEO's 2024 revenue. Adam Sawyer, director of research for Relevant Research, which runs the ICE Detention Reports website, says GEO runs the fourth- and fifth-largest ICE facilities: one in South Texas housing about 1,790 and one in Adelanto, California, housing some 1,784 people, as of last month.
A year earlier, in January 2025, the South Texas facility held 1,664 people and the one in Adelanto held just 2 people, Sawyer said.
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The Catholic investors led by the USA East Province of the Society of Jesus hold as little as $53,000 of GEO's shares, according to disclosures. But they've had an outsized influence over larger investors, winning 88% of shareholder support on a vote that pressed GEO to issue an annual human rights report in 2019.
In November, the priests submitted a shareholder proposal that would require GEO to disclose "whether its services contribute to violations of international human rights law and expose the company to material risks."
The filers mentioned a University of Washington report that detainees have been sent from a GEO-run facility in Tacoma, Washington, to the controversial CECOT mega-prison in El Salvador. A GEO unit buses detainees to deportation flights, the report states.
In a December 30 letter seen by Reuters, a GEO attorney told regulators the proponents' claims were "false and misleading" and that it would not allow shareholders to vote on the disclosure proposal from the priest group.
"The entire theme and premise of the Proposal is that the Company is engaging in enforced disappearances in violation of international human rights law" through its contracts, GEO attorney Esther Moreno of the Akerman law firm said in the letter. The services "are provided in compliance with U.S. federal immigration law," Moreno said.
In the 2019 case, GEO asked the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for permission to skip the shareholder vote, a common corporate practice. The agency, under Trump, put new policies in place in November, making it easier for companies to skip such votes without waiting for regulators' blessing, enabling GEO to forgo the vote.
Pham said GEO's claims don't match the resolution's language since it only seeks more information, and said GEO has cut back its human rights reporting.
GEO, he said, owes more explanation about its treatment of detainees like Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish graduate student arrested in Massachusetts in March over an editorial she co-wrote in the Tufts University student newspaper in 2024 supporting Palestinians in Israel's war in Gaza. In a July Vanity Fair article, Ozturk described being held for 45 days at a GEO facility in Louisiana deprived of sleep and fresh air.
GEO did not directly address Pham's concerns. A representative said GEO "plays no role" in granting ICE facility access and that it offers medical care and legal advice.
“We are proud of the role our company has played for 40 years to support the law enforcement mission of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement," GEO said.
(Reporting by Ross Kerber; Editing by Dawn Kopecki and Aurora Ellis)
