When George Zoley, the founder of a private company that manages more than 20 federal immigration amenities testified earlier than Congress in 2020, he spoke about how his personal immigrant expertise formed his life.
Zoley, the CEO and govt chairman of private prison firm The GEO Group, was born in 1950 in a home with no plumbing or electrical energy in the distant city of Florina in northwestern Greece, in accordance to a transcript of his testimony at a listening to on ICE contractors’ response to the Covid-19 outbreak.
“Fortunately, in 1953 my family received approval to immigrate to the United States where we traveled by ship landing in New York City and where we were processed through Ellis Island,” Zoley mentioned, referring to the fabled American gateway for greater than 12 million immigrants who arrived there for processing between 1892 and 1954.
“My own immigrant story has shaped the core values that have guided my entire life and career, which include the principle of never placing profit above the value of people,” mentioned the CEO of the nation’s largest for-profit jailer of immigrants and ICE’s biggest contractor.
Now, six years after the listening to, GEO Group’s Delaney Hall facility in New Jersey is underneath scrutiny over allegations of inhumane conditions and mistreatment.
The 1,000-bed Delaney Hall facility is an element of a multi-billion-dollar business empire constructed largely from authorities contracts for housing detained newcomers pursuing their very own goals. It has turn out to be a flashpoint for demonstrations in opposition to President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement crackdown – and the website of latest clashes between baton-wielding legislation enforcement officers and protesters underneath clouds of tear gas exterior its partitions.
“(Zoley) would never want for his family (to go through) what I went through in that detention center,” mentioned a South American immigrant who was detained at Delaney Hall final month and requested not to be named for concern of retaliation. “I do not wish that for nobody.”
The situations at the heart present “a complete lack of character on his part and disrespect towards immigrants,” mentioned the man, who’s in his 40s, when instructed by NCS of the CEO’s immigrant expertise.
“For him to create and have those types of detention centers, making millions and millions of dollars, it’s very hypocritical,” the immigrant added. “I do not believe that he would put in his son’s plate the food we were served at the detention center.”
GEO Group didn’t immediately reply to NCS’s request for touch upon allegations of detainee mistreatment at Delaney Hall or different company-run detention amenities. The agency additionally didn’t reply to a request for remark from Zoley on his private immigration historical past and the way it informs his perspective in the operation of these amenities.
Despite the founder’s historical past, immigrant detainees at GEO Group amenities don’t seem to obtain extra humane therapy, mentioned Nancy Foner, an immigration historian at Hunter College and creator of “From Ellis Island to JFK: New York’s Two Great Waves of Immigration.”
“He’s kind of elevating his own experience and certainly he’s willing to have these detention centers with terrible conditions for immigrants who often are arrested without judicial warrants,” Foner mentioned of Zoley. “It’s terrible. I guess it’s the power of making a lot of money.”
Zoley was 3 when he arrived in New York along with his 5-year-old brother, Elias, and their 28-year-old mom, Anastassia, who was listed as a US citizen, in accordance to passenger manifests from the ship Nea Hellas — which had originated from a port exterior of Athens. At the time, the Zoleys’ household title was Zolis.
Zoley’s father left Greece in 1951 “to pursue a better life for his family,” in accordance to his 2014 obituary. He was later joined by his household, who “took a 16 day transatlantic voyage” in 1953 to New York.
“We settled in Akron, Ohio, where I learned to speak English and began my education,” the youthful Zoley instructed Congress.
Zoley, who based The GEO Group in 1984, defended the agency’s work throughout his testimony earlier than Congress in 2020.
“We don’t manage any shelters or facilities for unaccompanied minors,” he mentioned. “We don’t manage any facilities with chain link fencing in housing areas. We don’t play a role in who is assigned to a facility under our management. We don’t lobby for stricter criminal justice or immigration laws.”
Zoley added, “We respect the right of all persons to have a safe and humane living environment, and our commitment to this right is unwavering.”
In an e mail to NCS, GEO Group spokesperson Christopher Ferreira mentioned: “We are proud of the role our company has played for 40 years to support the law enforcement mission of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).”
The firm’s “support services are monitored by ICE, including by on-site agency personnel, and other organizations within the Department of Homeland Security to ensure compliance with ICE’s detention standards and contract requirements regarding the treatment and services ICE detainees receive,” GEO Group mentioned in a press release released last month in response to criticisms about situations at Delaney Hall.
Those companies, the assertion mentioned, “include around-the-clock access to medical care, in-person and virtual legal and family visitation, general and legal library access, translation services, dietician-approved meals, religious and specialty diets, recreational amenities, and opportunities to practice their religious beliefs.”
Still, attorneys for Delaney Hall detainees mentioned their purchasers have protested over spoiled meals, overcrowded situations that power folks to sleep on flooring, and a scarcity of medical look after folks with most cancers and diabetes, amongst different issues.
“Delaney Hall is not … one single bad apple,” New Jersey immigration lawyer Selenia Destefani, CEO of the Nova Law Group, instructed NCS. “There’s many detention facilities around America that are like that.”
The Department of Homeland Security has pushed back in opposition to allegations of inhumane residing situations or mistreatment at Delaney Hall.
On Wednesday, a heat and sunny spring day, Maria Hurtado, 23, was blowing bubbles in the course of her almost 2-year-old son exterior the Delaney Hall facility. Her 24-year-old husband, Marlon Torres, has been held there for 3 months. After their visits, she mentioned, the boy at all times leaves in tears.
Torres, who’s from Colombia, was arrested by ICE when he appeared for an immigration appointment, his spouse mentioned. He was their sole breadwinner. “I felt like the world crashed down on me,” she mentioned.
Hurtado likened the meals at Delaney Hall to “cat food” and mentioned detainees are handled “like animals.” Her husband instructed her he was served a plate of beans contaminated with worms. It can take so long as every week to see a health care provider, Hurtado mentioned her husband instructed her.
“I want to throw myself in bed and cry all day because I don’t know what to do anymore,” she mentioned. “You feel powerless you can’t do more.”
The South American immigrant, who spoke to NCS by way of a translator, was launched from Delaney Hall final month and mentioned he was held with seven different males in a small room with 4 bunk beds. Outside, there was a single toilet for the almost 200 males on the flooring. Half of the eight bogs had been clogged and unusable, he mentioned. One day, a detainee slipped in the bathe and handed out after placing his head. It took 40 minutes for assist to arrive, he mentioned.
The air-con was at all times on excessive, and the males didn’t have heat blankets. “That’s why a lot of people were often very sick,” the immigrant mentioned.
The meals, he mentioned, didn’t odor contemporary. To make issues worse, he additionally began to get insufferable belly ache; his stool was bloody, he mentioned. When he noticed a health care provider inside the facility a couple of week later, he was assured that his situation was regular and was instructed he had to eat. After his launch, the immigrant mentioned, he had to have surgical procedure to resolve the situation.
“There is psychological abuse,” he mentioned. “A lot of guards pressure us to sign voluntary deportation papers. The detention center changes people’s lives. Your mental health is gone. God willing, justice will be served.”
During the Trump administration’s push for mass deportations nationwide, nearly 50 ICE detainees have died. More detainees died in custody in 2025 than in any 12 months in a minimum of twenty years, NCS has reported.
On Tuesday, New Jersey officials sued GEO Group, asking a courtroom to grant the state well being division entry to the heart, saying in its lawsuit it wants to decide “whether Delaney Hall is currently placing residents – or the public at large – at risk through unsanitary or unsafe health practices.”
DHS referred to as New Jersey’s lawsuit “frivolous” in a statement, saying “Delaney Hall complies with all required state and local laws.”
“ICE is regularly audited and inspected by external agencies,” DHS mentioned, including that New Jersey well being officers inspected the facility’s meals service space late final month. New Jersey’s lawsuit additionally famous this however mentioned it was not given full entry to the facility.
The GEO Group has the highest income of any non-public detention contractor in the United States, the Brennan Center for Justice reported final 12 months. This 12 months it’s holding roughly 24,000 ICE detainees, an organization document, Zoley instructed traders in a conference call in February. It can also be the trade’s high contributor to political campaigns, according to OpenSecrets.
GEO Group has maintained shut ties to officers at DHS, the Washington Post reported, with a former govt of the firm being employed final 12 months by the Trump administration to oversee an growth of ICE detention amenities utilizing $45 billion put aside by Congress final 12 months.
On its website, GEO Group says its ICE amenities present “high-quality, culturally responsive services in safe, secure, and humane environments that meet the needs of the individuals in the care and custody of federal immigration authorities.”
In February 2025, one month after Trump took workplace for his second time period, GEO Group announced a 15-year contract with ICE to present safety, meals companies, medical care and authorized counsel at its Delaney facility.
“We are continuing to prepare for what we believe is an unprecedented opportunity to help the federal government meet its expanded immigration enforcement priorities,” Zoley mentioned in an organization assertion.
GEO Group is the nation’s largest ICE contractor and offers greater than 40% of the safe beds for the company, in accordance to the firm.
The firm reported $2.63 billion in complete income in 2025, in contrast to $2.42 billion in 2024. Zoley told investors in February that GEO Group anticipated to generate up to $520 million in annualized revenues – “making (2025) the most successful year for new business wins in our Company’s history.”
While the firm has made an enormous payday from immigration enforcement, it has additionally faced lawsuits over allegations of abuse and mistreatment in non-public amenities in a number of states.
Then in June 2025, four detainees escaped from Delaney Hall, by “kicking through an interior wall,” Newark Mayor Ras Baraka mentioned in a post on X. The males had been recaptured. The escape occurred throughout detainee protests over situations at the facility.
Foner, the historian, believes Zoley is “looking, in a way, nostalgically back to his own trajectory but what he’s doing is anti-immigrant.”
“It’s sort of implicitly having a romanticized view of his own past against what he’s willing to do to immigrants today,” she mentioned.
The Ellis Island Honors Society, a nonprofit “founded on the conviction that the diversity of the American people is what makes this nation great,” offered Zoley with an Ellis Island Medal of Honor in 2002.
The award “commemorates the indefatigable spirit of those who immigrated to the United States during the Ellis Island era.” It honors “great ethnic Americans who, through their achievements and contributions, and in the spirit of their ethnic origins, have enriched this country and have become role models for future generations.” Trump was awarded the identical medal in 1986.
Vincent Cannato, a historical past professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston and creator of “American Passage: The History of Ellis Island,” referred to as Zoley’s life an American success story.
“There are a lot of people who have entered the country illegally, who are here undocumented over the years,” he mentioned. “We’re struggling with how to deal with them. His company has obviously stepped into this and found a way to make profits off of that. Whether you think it’s ethical or not, I think it’s kind of a personal judgment call.”