If the GEO Group sounds at all familiar, it’s probably because the private prison company operates some highly controversial facilities, including Delaney Hall in New Jersey. The business nevertheless received some lucrative news from the Trump administration last month.

On July 13, Immigration and Customs Enforcement approved a five-year contract with the company that will pay the GEO Group $85 million a year to operate a detention center in Colorado. Two weeks later, ICE also approved a separate five-year contract that will pay the company $80 million a year to operate a facility in North Carolina.

While the contracts are notable in their own right, let’s not overlook what the firm did between those two announcements. The New York Times reported:

A private prison company donated more than $1.4 million to President Trump’s political operation last month after his administration awarded contracts that could pay the company $165 million a year to house immigrants awaiting deportation.

The donations from a subsidiary of the GEO Group were disclosed in a campaign finance report filed by MAGA Inc., a super PAC run by Mr. Trump’s allies.

The firm’s donation was sent on July 16, just three days after ICE approved the contract for the Colorado project. What’s more, GEO Reentry Services, a subsidiary of the GEO Group, has donated more than $4.4 million to MAGA Inc. since the beginning of last year. (Though the super PAC is technically separate from the president’s operation, Trump explicitly said last month, in reference to MAGA Inc., “I control it.”)

The company and the Trump-aligned super PAC didn’t respond to the Times’ request for comment, but a White House spokesperson denied any link between the contracts and the contribution — “Any allegation that political donations play a role in agencies awarding government contracts are false,” the White House said — and the Department of Homeland Security said the contracts were part of a competitive process and that the department “runs this process by the book.”

Perhaps. But while there doesn’t appear to be any publicly available evidence to tie together the contracts and the donation, it’s also difficult to give the relevant players the benefit of the doubt. Consider the recent pattern:

• Tobacco company Reynolds American donated $5 million to the Trump-aligned super PAC. About a week later, at the president’s insistence, the administration approved a new policy that’s likely to benefit the tobacco industry.
• A Venezuelan-Italian banker was facing a variety of serious felony charges, right up until his daughter made a generous contribution to the same Trump-aligned super PAC. The president signed a pardon for the banker soon after.
• When the nursing home industry hoped to block a Biden-era policy that would have required increased staffing levels, it started writing a series of generous checks to the same Trump-aligned super PAC. Soon after, Trump administration officials abandoned their support for the policy the industry opposed.
• In February, on the heels of a $1 million donation to the same Trump-aligned super PAC, a billionaire opponent of the Gordie Howe International Bridge convinced the Republican administration to abandon its own position and delay the project.

With a pattern like this, it’s tough to ignore the pay-to-play appearances in an administration for which corruption allegations have become the norm.

As a recent CNN analysis summarized, “The evidence is circumstantial, but the list is long. Supporters who have business with the federal government clearly see utility in contributing large amounts to President Donald Trump’s super PAC, MAGA Inc.”

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

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