Jim Jordan is among the most famous names in this stretch of Ohio.
The congressman and chair of the powerful House judiciary committee is considered among the most conservative and influential members in Congress, and is a longtime loyalist of Donald Trump.
But a report released last month by Pogo Investigates, a nonprofit newsroom, highlighted the close ties between Jordan and a company profiting from the Trump administration’s anti-immigration crackdown, which has sometimes been violent and even deadly.
The report found that the American Liberty Foundation, a political action committee (Pac) tied to Jordan, last year received $250,000 in “dark money” payments from Geo Group, the Florida-headquartered company that runs dozens of detention centers on behalf of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) across the country.
The money transfer came 11 days after the passing of the president’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act last July, which saw the federal government’s budget for ICE and other immigration enforcement efforts trebled to $170bn – an amount greater than the GDP of Morocco.
“A company and or a company’s political action committee is permitted to contribute funds to a Super Pac, but a federal contractor [such as Geo Group] is not,” says Nick Schwellenbach, the author of the Pogo Investigates report.
“Geo Group’s Pac had not disclosed this. Only American Liberty Foundation had. Both have legal obligations to disclose. This raises a lot of questions about the broader universe of dark money contributions from Geo Group or other private prison companies.”
Campaign Legal Center, a litigation advocacy organization, has since filed a complaint to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) against Geo Group, alleging it violated federal campaign finance laws by making an illegal, misreported contribution.
Critics say that taxpayer money is helping to create a “deportation-industrial complex” that puts Geo Group, which runs ICE detention facilities across 16 states, including Delaney Hall in New Jersey, at the forefront of the benefactors.
All the while, conditions at many of the 52 detention centers that Geo operates on behalf of ICE have been reported as being very poor. Detainees at Delaney Hall last month launched a hunger strike to protest against the state of their living conditions and accused the contractor of denying them access to medical care. This month, the state of New Jersey sued Geo Group, seeking full access in order to inspect the facility.
In Michigan, family members and friends of the estimated 1,500 immigrant detainees held at the North Lake Processing Center have reported being verbally abused by staff and refused permission to see their detained family members.
Repeated emails sent by the Guardian to Geo Group asking why the company donated to Jordan’s Super Pac and if it believes the money represents a conflict of interest were not responded to.
Some rights groups have suggested that the poor living conditions are a tactic to force immigrants to self-deport. Trump’s former attorney general, Pam Bondi, previously worked as a lobbyist for Geo Group before joining the Trump administration.
According to reports, ICE is Geo Group’s biggest source of revenue, with 41% of its 2024 income coming from ICE. That figure is likely to have risen significantly under the Trump administration, with a host of new contracts signed.
Hellbound and Down 