Virtual Ministry Archive

BREAKING🚨 GEO Group expects roughly $3 billion in revenue this year off Trump's deportation push, including from Colorado's only immigration jail, where a full day of a detainee's labor pays $1. A South American man released from the Aurora facility said guards beat him while he was handcuffed and in the middle of a panic attack. Photos his attorney took afterward show his head swollen and his wrists, neck and arms covered in deep purple bruises. At night in his bunk, he said, he dreamed up ways to kill himself. Since his release he has barely left his home. "I might be a big, tall man, but I am embarrassed to tell you that I am fragile now," he said through tears and a Spanish interpreter. "Have mercy because there is no mercy here." The facility is run by GEO Group, which expects roughly $3 billion in revenue this year off the deportation push. A day's work inside the facility pays a detainee $1. Detainees describe showers so hot that two of them said it felt like the water would burn the hair off their heads, air conditioning that failed for weeks two summers running, and food that keeps making them sick. One young Guatemalan man slept on the floor in his underwear because the ground was cooler. It felt like "boiling in a pot," he said. Batooie, 61, said the apple slices they were served once were moldy. For two nights in August, a gas-like odor filled the cell shared by Daniel, a 32-year-old Venezuelan held there more than a year. Guards told the men it was nothing. He called his wife anyway. "And I want you to know, in case I do die, this is why I died." 911 records show a stabbing in May, two sexual assault reports this year, and four overdose calls in April, three of them believed to be intentional. Two transgender women were told this month they could go to solitary confinement or be housed with men. Colorado health investigators confirmed a tuberculosis case inside and say GEO never handed over the records or access needed to trace who was exposed. GEO amended its contract this month as it fought state oversight. Free legal training for detainees has been ended, and the government has sought to block members of Congress from visiting. The Department of Homeland Security says its facilities "operate in strict accordance with all applicable federal detention standards." GEO did not respond to an interview request.