Invested in company with bad publicity over inmate abuse, poor conditions.
Billionaires George Soros and Bill Gates – both supporters of immigration reform – are investors in a controversial private prison firm that houses detained illegal aliens.
Soros and Gates are shareholders in GEO Group Inc., which operates prisons under contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
GEO has been represented by the lobby firm headed by Tony Podesta, the brother of White House counselor and Center for American Progress founder John Podesta.
GEO, the world’s largest operator of private prisons and detention centers, was known as the Wackenhut Corrections Corporation. It has faced a string of negative publicity following numerous deadly events in its prisons and accusations of inmate abuse and poor conditions.
Among its 59 U.S. prison facilities is the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Wash.
The GEO website describes the center as a “privately-owned detention facility under contract with Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) to house detainees pending removal process.”
While Soros and Gates support numerous immigration activist groups through their respective foundations, the immigrant groups may be surprised to learn the Northwest Detention Center does not offer educational or vocational training programs to those housed in its complex.
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