Trump owns private-prison stocks his deportation drive is enriching

President Donald Trump's mandatory financial disclosure for 2025, his first year back in office, showed his investment accounts hold shares in GEO Group and CoreCivic, the two largest private operators of U.S. immigration detention. The filing recorded more than 21,000 securities trades across eight accounts, which it described as professionally managed by advisers who do not regularly communicate with Trump; the holdings are not in a blind trust. Trump began buying GEO Group shares within about two weeks of his January 2025 inauguration and first bought CoreCivic in February 2025, buying and selling shares in both through the year. Over the same period, his administration's expansion of immigration detention channeled new business to both firms: GEO Group agreed to supply roughly 32,000 ICE beds, more than double its prior level, reopened a 1,940-bed facility in Adelanto, California, and opened a Newark, New Jersey center under a contract valued at about $1 billion, while CoreCivic resumed operations at a Dilley, Texas facility for up to 2,400 people under a contract worth about $180 million a year. The holdings drew criticism from Democrats over conflicts of interest; unlike other executive-branch officials, the president is exempt from the main federal conflict-of-interest law.