A CREW analysis of Trump's financial disclosures, published July 21, 2026, found his brokers have made 29 trades in private prison stocks since he returned to office, beginning on the tenth day of his second term. The trades, totaling between $281,029 and $990,000, are split between GEO Group and CoreCivic, America's two largest private prison companies.
The sequencing is the story. In February 2025, CoreCivic's CEO told an earnings call he expected Trump's immigration policies to produce “the most significant growth in our company's history,” and GEO Group's executive chairman said the company faced “an unprecedented opportunity at this time to play a role in supporting President Trump's new administration policy.” That same month, Trump's account made seven GEO Group and CoreCivic purchases. The predictions were correct: GEO Group received $2.1 billion and CoreCivic $653.5 million in ICE contract obligations in 2025, according to OpenSecrets' analysis of federal contracting data, and GEO's 2025 profits rose nearly 700 percent to more than $250 million, what its CEO called the “most successful period for new business wins in our company's history.” CoreCivic's net income rose nearly 70 percent to $116.5 million, with more than $650 million in ICE contract obligations. In August 2026 NPR reported the two companies announcing roughly $1.4 billion in combined quarterly revenue as detention climbed.
The money flows both directions. GEO Group was the first corporate PAC to max out to Trump's 2024 campaign; its PAC, a subsidiary, and executives contributed nearly $2 million to the campaign, associated entities, and the inauguration, and a GEO subsidiary gave $1 million to Trump's super PAC in 2026. CoreCivic and its CEO donated $816,600 to the campaign and inaugural committee.
The personnel flow in both directions too. Trump's pick for acting ICE director, David Venturella, worked at GEO Group for about a decade, NPR reported, and was a paid GEO consultant until January 2025; in June 2026 Venturella signed the memo ending ICE's obligation to report deaths of detainees who die within 30 days of release (see ICE Drops the Rule Requiring It to Report Deaths of Detainees Who Die Within 30 Days of Release, as Custody Deaths Run at a 20-Year High). Border czar Tom Homan was a paid GEO consultant before joining the government, and Pam Bondi lobbied for GEO Group before she became attorney general.
The defenses belong on the record. The Trump Organization says the stock purchases are controlled by outside brokerage firms and that Trump has no control over them. CREW's response is structural: broker control does not resolve the conflict that arises when a president invests in companies his policies enrich, and unlike most recent past presidents, Trump has not placed his assets in a blind trust. The president is also not subject to the ethics laws that bar conflicts of interest for most executive-branch employees, Time noted, so an arrangement that would be forbidden to his appointees is lawful for him. No evidence shows Trump directed detention policy to benefit his holdings. What the documents establish is that the person setting detention policy holds and trades the stock of its two largest beneficiaries, in a disclosure system that reports trades only in dollar ranges, which NBC noted makes exact accounting impossible. In August 2026 Sen. Elizabeth Warren and colleagues wrote to Trump about his stock trades.
CREW set the companies' record 2025 profits beside the current fiscal year, the deadliest ever for people in ICE custody (see At Least 60 People Have Died in ICE Custody Since Trump's Second Term Began, at a Death Rate Far Above Recent Years, Trump Bought Up to $5 Million in Axon Stock Two Weeks Before ICE Sought a $220 Million Taser Deal Tailored to the Company, Trump's Q1 Disclosure Shows 3,700+ Stock Trades, Including Buys in Nvidia, Palantir, and Axon as His Administration Steered Billions in Business Their Way and ICE Moves to Buy Its Detention Centers From GEO Group and CoreCivic to Shield Them From State Oversight, and the GEO CEO Admits That's the Point).
Correction (September 25, 2026): this entry's title said Trump's detention policy “made” the companies' profits explode; CREW says they “benefited massively from Trump administration policy,” and the title now says they profited from it. It described the companies as operating most of ICE's detention network (NPR calls them the country's two largest private prison companies), said “unlike recent past presidents” (CREW: “most”), stated two points without a source (the president's exemption from conflict rules, now sourced to Time; the size of the trades relative to his portfolio, removed), and merged CREW's 2025 profit year with its fiscal-year death count. One source was labeled AP; it is an ABC News story. A source for the Venturella memo was added.
Update (October 2, 2026): a second tracker entry on the same CREW report has been merged into this one. Trump's 2025 financial disclosure, as reported by Moneywise, shows he began buying GEO Group shares 10 days after his inauguration and CoreCivic in February 2025.
Correction (October 2, 2026): this entry said GEO Group holds more than $2 billion in ICE contracts, roughly half its revenue. OpenSecrets counts $2.1 billion in 2025 ICE contract obligations against about $2.6 billion in total 2025 revenue, so the revenue-share figure has been removed.