Private prison company GEO pivoted to tech, and it’s raking in hundreds of millions

At first, the BI VeriWatch looks like any modern smartwatch: GPS, LTE, water-resistant design, even a front-facing camera. But the VeriWatch isn’t a consumer product at all; it’s used by ICE to monitor undocumented immigrants’ every move. 

The chunky device requires selfies throughout the day—to confirm its wearer’s identity to ICE agents. It features a piercing built-in alarm that sounds if it’s removed. And if the person wearing the tracker goes somewhere without permission, it may kick into a “high-frequency pursuit mode” that will let agents track their every step in real time.

The device, introduced earlier this year by BI, a subsidiary of the private prison giant GEO Group, is the newest product in a lucrative, quickly growing industry of high-tech surveillance products and services that bill themselves as alternatives to physical detention. ICE has said electronic monitoring is aimed at keeping track of immigrants who have been released from custody, are generally under deportation proceedings, and “may pose a flight risk, but for whom detention may not be the most appropriate option.”

But rights advocates say the electronic monitoring program is really a kind of “e-carceration”: a punitive, dehumanizing system that doesn’t actually reduce incarceration but expands it. “In reality, [the program] has been a default prescription for people who cross the border seeking asylum, and who pose no real flight risk,” says Jake Wiener, a lawyer with the Electronic Privacy Information Center. “Through the program, ICE gets access to the personal information and geolocation data of hundreds of thousands of migrants, while the contractor BI makes a hefty profit off the service.”

For GEO, one of the world’s largest private prison companies, which acquired surveillance firm BI in 2011, tech tools like the Veriwatch are part of a larger pivot that’s helping keep their industry afloat as the White House cuts back on their contracts. In 2021, President Biden ordered federal agencies to stop doing business with private prison companies, but exempted ICE from the directive. That’s pushed GEO, a publicly traded corporation, to increase its detention facilities contracts with ICE while expanding its techno-surveillance business—and it’s bringing in good money. 

According to GEO’s 2022 annual financial statement, revenues decreased year-over-year for all of its business segments except for one: electronic monitoring and supervision services (that is, selling devices and software used to track people, and providing the staff to monitor them), which shot up by 77.9 percent, from $279 million to $496 million. In an earnings call on Wednesday, GEO executives told investors they were hopeful more immigrants would soon be funneled into these monitoring programs. “[A] combination of different [Department of Homeland Security] policies . . . in effect, provide for a wider use of the alternatives to detention programs,” said GEO CEO George Zoley, “as well as a shifting of where participants are in that program and what monitoring devices they may be using.”

The VeriWatch has already been deployed in a pilot run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on immigrants in Colorado. In its earnings call, executives said the company is “actively marketing this innovative new product to government agencies across the country,” as a replacement to the digital ankle shackles that thousands of immigrants are already required to wear.

Before Biden took office, there were around 80,000 immigrants under some kind of digital surveillance, according to Laura Rivera, an attorney at Just Futures Law, an anti-surveillance nonprofit. Advocates believe that number is now around 200,000, which includes people wearing both BI’s new wristwatches and an older model of digital ankle shackle, and those using BI’s monitoring app, which requires regular check-ins. 

Regardless of the method, detainees say electronic monitoring is a miserable experience—one that can last for years. Rivera says surveilled immigrants become isolated “because they don’t want to expose their friends and family to location tracking by ICE.” They’re often rejected from jobs. And to avoid getting arrested, they must also keep their devices charged at all times and troubleshoot glitchy software. “People have told me about having near-panic attacks, because often the app glitches out as you’re trying to upload your photo,” she says. Or, “I’ve literally heard of people having to plug themselves into a wall as they were waiting for the shackle to charge.”

There are significant data privacy concerns as well. Monitored individuals have to sign an agreement that says BI shares some of their data with third parties, but it’s unclear what’s happening to it. “Because private companies provide the tech and often do the monitoring, there is no public accountability or transparency into how consequential decisions are made, what privacy protections are in place, or how sensitive data is sold or abused,” says Wiener, the Electronic Privacy Information Center lawyer. 

Worst of all, advocates say, the increase in electronic monitoring isn’t even reducing traditional incarceration as promised. According to an ACLU report released earlier this week, the number of immigrants currently detained by ICE has doubled the number at the start of the Biden administration. “So even though the Biden administration tries to paint [electronic monitoring] as some type of kinder and gentler alternative to brick-and-mortar incarceration, it’s simply doublespeak,” Rivera says. “Even as ICE exponentially grows this kind of electronic surveillance, it’s pushing more and more people into immigration prisons.”

ICE did not respond to emailed questions for comment. In a statement, a spokesperson for Day 1 Alliance, an industry group representing GEO, said, “While others push to advance political and ideological agendas such as the abolishment of ICE, D1A members remain focused on providing real solutions that meet the stated needs of government, as we have for decades under both Democratic and Republican administrations.”

Rights advocates say there’s a simpler and better solution, if the goal is to keep tabs on undocumented immigrants. “Over 95% of community members attend all of their hearings when represented by a lawyer,” says Anaya Robinson, a senior policy strategist at the Colorado ACLU. “If we limit, or end, the use of electronic monitoring, and instead provide a right to counsel, we can increase positives outcomes for individuals and families for the same, or potentially less, cost to taxpayers, while maintaining privacy and humanity for everyone.”