Noem adviser Lewandowski freezes out the biggest private-prison company

In 2025, Corey Lewandowski, a special government employee and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's top adviser, blocked GEO Group, the largest U.S. private-prison company, from new department contracts for months, according to DHS officials cited by The Wall Street Journal. A senior DHS official told NBC News that Lewandowski instructed him not to award GEO more contracts within weeks of a meeting with GEO founder George Zoley in late February or early March 2025. During the 2024 transition, Lewandowski had told Zoley he wanted to be paid for protecting and growing GEO's DHS contracts, and Zoley refused, according to NBC's sources. At the 2025 meeting Zoley offered Lewandowski a recurring consulting retainer; Lewandowski wanted pay tied to GEO's new or renewed contracts, described by one person as a "success fee," and Zoley declined. In 2017, when GEO declined to hire Lewandowski as a lobbyist, he had threatened that it would never receive another government contract while Trump was president, according to the Journal. Afterward the terms of two GEO federal contracts were shortened and several of its facilities sat idle. DHS officials said Lewandowski boasted that he was forcing GEO to accept less business, and ICE officials said he pushed for alternatives such as state-run facilities in Florida and Louisiana. GEO's share of the immigration detention market, which more than doubled to about $4 billion under Trump, fell from 37 percent under Biden to 25 percent, although it booked almost $1 billion in detention contracts in roughly 500 days and won a $121 million contract in December 2025. Noem had placed department spending over $100,000 under the secretary's control and, according to NBC's sources, largely delegated that review to Lewandowski. A senior White House official told NBC the White House had received about a dozen complaints from at least four companies and was "aware of the allegations of pay to play," but took no action. The DHS inspector general has found evidence Lewandowski may have been involved in improperly awarding contracts and is weighing a criminal referral, and House Oversight Democrats are investigating. Lewandowski's representative called the GEO account "absolutely false" and said he never demanded payment from any contractor and played no role in contract review. GEO and Zoley did not respond.