The founder of a private company accused of mistreating ICE detainees came to the US via Ellis Island in 1953
By Ray Sanchez, CNN
(CNN) — When George Zoley, the founder of a private company that manages more than 20 federal immigration facilities testified before Congress in 2020, he spoke about how his own immigrant experience shaped his life.
Zoley, the CEO and executive chairman of private prison firm The GEO Group, was born in 1950 in a house with no plumbing or electricity in the remote town of Florina in northwestern Greece, according to a transcript of his testimony at a hearing 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 said, referring to the fabled American gateway for more 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,” said the CEO of the nation’s largest for-profit jailer of immigrants and ICE’s biggest contractor.
Now, six years after the hearing, GEO Group’s Delaney Hall facility in New Jersey is under scrutiny over allegations of inhumane conditions and mistreatment.
The 1,000-bed Delaney Hall facility is part of a multi-billion-dollar business empire built largely from government contracts for housing detained newcomers pursuing their own dreams. It has become a flashpoint for demonstrations against President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement crackdown – and the site of recent clashes between baton-wielding law enforcement officers and protesters under clouds of tear gas outside its walls.
“(Zoley) would never want for his family (to go through) what I went through in that detention center,” said a South American immigrant who was detained at Delaney Hall last month and asked not to be named for fear of retaliation. “I do not wish that for nobody.”
The conditions at the center show “a complete lack of character on his part and disrespect towards immigrants,” said the man, who is in his 40s, when told by CNN of the CEO’s immigrant experience.
“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 did not directly respond to CNN’s request for comment on allegations of detainee mistreatment at Delaney Hall or other company-run detention facilities. The firm also did not respond to a request for comment from Zoley on his personal immigration history and how it informs his perspective in the operation of those facilities.
A history supporting immigration enforcement
Despite the founder’s history, immigrant detainees at GEO Group facilities do not appear to receive more humane treatment, said Nancy Foner, an immigration historian at Hunter College and author 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 said 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 with his 5-year-old brother, Elias, and their 28-year-old mother, Anastassia, who was listed as a US citizen, according to passenger manifests from the ship Nea Hellas — which had originated from a port outside of Athens. At the time, the Zoleys’ family name was Zolis.
Zoley’s father left Greece in 1951 “to pursue a better life for his family,” according to his 2014 obituary. He was later joined by his family, 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 younger Zoley told Congress.
Zoley, who founded The GEO Group in 1984, defended the firm’s work during his testimony before Congress in 2020.
“We don’t manage any shelters or facilities for unaccompanied minors,” he said. “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 email to CNN, GEO Group spokesperson Christopher Ferreira said: “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 company’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 said in a statement released last month in response to criticisms about conditions at Delaney Hall.
Those services, the statement said, “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.”
Federal officials push back against allegations
Still, attorneys for Delaney Hall detainees said their clients have protested over spoiled food, overcrowded conditions that force people to sleep on floors, and a lack of medical care for people with cancer and diabetes, among other problems.
“Delaney Hall is not … one single bad apple,” New Jersey immigration lawyer Selenia Destefani, CEO of the Nova Law Group, told CNN. “There’s many detention facilities around America that are like that.”
The Department of Homeland Security has pushed back against allegations of inhumane living conditions or mistreatment at Delaney Hall.
On Wednesday, a warm and sunny spring day, Maria Hurtado, 23, was blowing bubbles in the direction of her nearly 2-year-old son outside the Delaney Hall facility. Her 24-year-old husband, Marlon Torres, has been held there for three months. After their visits, she said, the boy always leaves in tears.
Torres, who is from Colombia, was arrested by ICE when he appeared for an immigration appointment, his wife said. He was their sole breadwinner. “I felt like the world crashed down on me,” she said.
Hurtado likened the meals at Delaney Hall to “cat food” and said detainees are treated “like animals.” Her husband told her he was served a plate of beans contaminated with worms. It can take as long as a week to see a doctor, Hurtado said her husband told her.
“I want to throw myself in bed and cry all day because I don’t know what to do anymore,” she said. “You feel powerless you can’t do more.”
Detainee calls conditions ‘psychological abuse’
The South American immigrant, who spoke to CNN through a translator, was released from Delaney Hall last month and said he was held with seven other men in a small room with four bunk beds. Outside, there was a single bathroom for the nearly 200 men on the floor. Half of the eight toilets were clogged and unusable, he said. One day, a detainee slipped in the shower and passed out after striking his head. It took 40 minutes for help to arrive, he said.
The air conditioning was always on high, and the men did not have warm blankets. “That’s why a lot of people were often very sick,” the immigrant said.
The food, he said, did not smell fresh. To make matters worse, he also started to get unbearable abdominal pain; his stool was bloody, he said. When he saw a doctor inside the facility about a week later, he was assured that his condition was normal and was told he had to eat. After his release, the immigrant said, he had to have surgery to resolve the condition.
“There is psychological abuse,” he said. “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 year in at least two decades, CNN has reported.
On Tuesday, New Jersey officials sued GEO Group, asking a court to grant the state health department access to the center, saying in its lawsuit it needs to determine “whether Delaney Hall is currently placing residents – or the public at large – at risk through unsanitary or unsafe health practices.”
DHS called 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 said, adding that New Jersey health officials inspected the facility’s food service area late last month. New Jersey’s lawsuit also noted this but said it was not given full access to the facility.
The big business of immigration detention
The GEO Group has the highest revenue of any private detention contractor in the United States, the Brennan Center for Justice reported last year. This year it is holding approximately 24,000 ICE detainees, a company record, Zoley told investors in a conference call in February. It is also the industry’s top contributor to political campaigns, according to OpenSecrets.
GEO Group has maintained close ties to officials at DHS, the Washington Post reported, with a former executive of the company being hired last year by the Trump administration to oversee an expansion of ICE detention facilities using $45 billion set aside by Congress last year.
On its website, GEO Group says its ICE facilities provide “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 office for his second term, GEO Group announced a 15-year contract with ICE to provide security, food services, medical care and legal 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 said in a company statement.
GEO Group is the nation’s largest ICE contractor and provides more than 40% of the secure beds for the agency, according to the company.
The company reported $2.63 billion in total revenue in 2025, compared to $2.42 billion in 2024. Zoley told investors in February that GEO Group expected 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 company has made a huge payday from immigration enforcement, it has also faced lawsuits over allegations of abuse and mistreatment in private facilities in multiple states.
Then in June 2025, four detainees escaped from Delaney Hall, by “kicking through an interior wall,” Newark Mayor Ras Baraka said in a post on X. The men were recaptured. The escape occurred during detainee protests over conditions 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 said.
The Ellis Island Honors Society, a nonprofit “founded on the conviction that the diversity of the American people is what makes this nation great,” presented 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 same medal in 1986.
Vincent Cannato, a history professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston and author of “American Passage: The History of Ellis Island,” called 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 said. “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.”
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CNN’s Nina Giraldo, Brynn Gingras, Andy Rose, Leigh Waldman, Gloria Pazmino, Taylor Romine, Matthew Rehbein, Catherine E. Shoichet, Chris Boyette, Sarah Dewberry, Gloria Pazmino Rebekah Reiss and Emma Tucker contributed to this report.
