Talk:GEO Group

Peer Review

This article presents the information in a sensible order while balancing and providing context to the topics being discussed. The information box has very descriptive information to help breakdown the insights of the company. The author did a good job of using an unbiased tone and neutrally analyzing the GEO Group. The lengths of the sections and subsections also reflect the importance of the topic and are written precisely; not adding unnecessary information, with reliable sources connected to keywords and referenced.

Should we add mention of David Courvelle?

https://www.kptv.com/2025/12/29/detention-officer-admits-sexually-abusing-detainee-ice-facility/ Tristatebob (talk) 21:46, 18 January 2026 (UTC)

Thomas Brown of the GEO Group runs over protestor

www.fox9.com/news/st-paul-woman-hit-car-nj-ice-detention-driver-charge-june-24-2026.amp ~2026-36804-67 (talk) 19:57, 25 June 2026 (UTC)

Too soon to tell. Is there a medical report? BD2412 T 21:01, 25 June 2026 (UTC)

Thomas Brown was charged with assault. There is a viral video of the incident. ~2026-36844-69 (talk) 01:39, 26 June 2026 (UTC)

When I read the headline I assumed this guy was some kind of executive, but he's just an employee. If we listed every employee incident that companies experience, our company articles would be nothing but lists of those. It doesn't seem like anyone has died or is going to die, and a charge is not a conviction, so we wait and see what develops. BD2412 T 02:46, 26 June 2026 (UTC)

we have video lol. I don't need a jury to correct point out he ran over a women with her backed turned, at their facility. ~2026-36804-67 (talk) 20:39, 26 June 2026 (UTC)

A jury would be needed to decide if this was merely accidental, and if not, whether it was criminal. Company vehicles for large corporations get into accidents on a daily basis. Here, for example, is a FedEx truck fully engulfed in flames on I-20, which is flashy news, but we're not going to add that to the FedEx article because Wikipedia is not a collection of granular isolated incidents. BD2412 T 22:13, 26 June 2026 (UTC)

Another GEO Group employee shot and wounded a protester outside an ICE detention facility near Denver. He has been fired and is currently in custody on assault charges. When I edited this article to reflect that you removed my edits citing the same rationale. I submit these, now two, incidents reflect a pattern of behavior seen in both GEO Group and ICE and they, and any future such incidents, should be included in the article and quite possibly merit their own section. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/23/us/colorado-ice-protest-shooting-geo-group.html ~2026-40179-80 (talk) 06:43, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

Is there a reliable source that actually states that incidents "reflect a pattern of behavior", or is this a synthesizing of a pattern from unrelated events? In the same period of time, there was an alleged shooting by a 17-year old McDonald's employee in Leesburg, Florida, and an alleged shooting by an 18-year old McDonald's employee in Hallandale Beach, Florida, but we are not about to make a section at McDonald's about either of these incidents, or this "pattern of behavior". BD2412 T 12:55, 24 July 2026 (UTC)

As soon as there is a RS I'll be sure to edit it in. I note that the US administration is not currently sending armed, masked agents to arrest McDonald's employees. ~2026-40179-80 (talk) 17:40, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

If your aim is to write about what the U.S. administration is doing, there are plenty of articles that are about the U.S. administration in which to write about it. There is plenty of content already in this article on controversial and criticized activities on the part of the article subject that are actually the intended products of its corporate practices. Adding relatively picayune individual incidents to the article detracts from that information rather than enhancing it. BD2412 T 18:19, 26 July 2026 (UTC)

Delaney Hall section overhaul

BD2412 contested my change. Per WP:ONUS, I am starting a talk page discussion to create consensus for re-adding content.

Below is my (slightly-updated from initial addition) proposed change that would replace the current GEO Group#Delaney Hall hunger strike and protests section using "excerpt" templates to centralize all information in one place:

{{excerpt|Delaney Hall oversight incident|only=paragraphs|hat=no}}

{{excerpt|Delaney Hall hunger strike and protests|only=paragraphs|hat=no}}

{{excerpt|Delaney Hall hunger strike and protests#June 2: Lawsuit against GEO Group|only=paragraphs|hat=no}}

{{excerpt|Delaney Hall hunger strike and protests#June 21: Car hits protester, Father's Day|hat=no}}

...which would translate to (in addition to some other templates):

---

Delaney Hall

Main article: Delaney Hall oversight incident

Detainees wave at protesters from windows, Delaney Hall, May 25, 2026

On May 9, 2025, a confrontation and subsequent skirmish between law enforcement and four Democratic politicians occurred at Delaney Hall, an immigration detention center in Newark, New Jersey, United States.

Ras Baraka, the mayor of Newark, was arrested and charged with trespassing, but the charges were later dropped. LaMonica McIver, one of the three U.S. representatives from New Jersey involved, was later charged with three counts of assaulting or interfering with a federal officer. McIver rejected the charges as an attempt at political intimidation.

Main article: Delaney Hall hunger strike and protests

Masked GEO Group employees outside Delaney Hall, May 25, 2026

Banner drop outside Delaney Hall by protesters, May 28, 2026

On May 22, 2026 in Newark, New Jersey, immigrants detained in Delaney Hall, a private prison run by GEO Group used for holding immigrants detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), held a month-long hunger and labor strike protesting conditions inside the facility. Detainees have been given expired food with worms or mold, sleep on the floor in overcrowded rooms, have been denied medical care for serious conditions, and have reportedly been abused by guards. Protests supporting the strikers escalated outside the facility with over 90 arrests. Conditions inside the facility worsened, with reports of batons, pepper spray, and tear gas being used against strikers and multiple ambulances arriving at the facility throughout the strike. The strikes ended due to actions taken by guards to intimidate, segregate, and discipline strikers, such as by putting strike leaders in solitary confinement, threatening to force-feed strikers, and transporting strikers to unknown facilities around the country.

Some protesters blocked ICE vehicles from entering or exiting the facility. ICE agents attacked protesters and journalists with batons, pepper spray, and tasers. Local officials including Governor Mikie Sherrill were denied access to the facility, and Senator Andy Kim was pepper sprayed by ICE while trying to de-escalate.

Governor Sherrill ordered the New Jersey State Police (NJSP) to take over operations outside the facility for ICE, and she also established "protest zones" for protesters to move inside, while Newark mayor Ras Baraka established an overnight curfew surrounding Delaney Hall. Riot police were then repeatedly deployed and used batons, pepper spray, tear gas, flash grenades, rubber bullets, horseback police, SWAT teams, armored vehicles, and undercover police to disperse, kettle, mass arrest, and criminally charge protesters who refused to leave, with many journalists being injured or arrested.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has characterized protesters as agitators and rioters, saying "There is NO hunger strike at Delaney Hall. There are NO subprime conditions or abuse at the facility." Governor Sherrill accused some protesters of being from "national extremist groups" without naming specific groups, and Mayor Baraka has criticized both protesters and police, saying the police's actions were "in some cases, unconstitutional." Municipal, state, and federal actions have sparked significant backlash from advocacy groups and the political left.

On Tuesday June 2, New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport announced a lawsuit by the state of New Jersey suing GEO Group in order allow the New Jersey Department of Health to inspect the facility.

External May 31 footage
Woman struck by car — CBS

On Sunday June 21, protesters held a Father's Day vigil, and tied neckties to the fence outside the facility to honor fathers who remained detained. Some protesters holding up signs saying "Free the dads."

During the vigil, one female protester was struck by a red Dodge Challenger from behind at around 1:52pm as it drove into the facility. According to The Jersey Vindicator, "Onlookers gasped and screamed as the car struck James near the waist, sending the American flag flying and dragging her several yards across the pavement." According to protesters, protests then escalated, with some demonstrators throwing plastic bottles and yelling, prompting federal agents to deploy pepper balls and pepper spray. DHS disputed this account, accusing activists of rioting prior to when the protester was hit by the vehicle. The protester was taken to University Hospital in Newark with non-life-threatening injuries. An investigation by the Newark Police Division (NPD) ensued.

The protester announced intent to sue GEO Group and ICE. A DHS spokesperson stated that the vehicle "was not being driven by an ICE employee," and the Newark Public Safety director confirmed that the person driving the car was an employee at GEO Group named Thomas Brown, who is being charged with assault.

References

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BD said Nine images of a single-facility protest is a vast overkill, as is the extent of this section relative to activities over a few months in a single facility in an article on a 40+year-old company with dozens of locations. Transcluding the multiple sections of another article on this one thing is also overkill. I'm happy to remove the nine images and only used the picture of the GEO Group employees and the main image of DH, like above.

However, the Delaney Hall protests have received significant media attention, have made national and international headlines, and are without a doubt extremely WP:NOTABLE. While GEO Group has existed for a long time, I do not think this should preclude us from covering highly-notable events in detail, as they pertain to GEO Group. A GEO Group employee allegedly hit protesters, GEO Group employees worked directly with ICE and state police which the article details, and GEO Group has been subject to lawsuits by NJ. GEO Group is inextricably connected to the Delaney Hall, and given DH's notability and given how GEO Group article is not at a length that should compel us to be conservative in our approach to adding content, I think the excerpts above are sufficient to summarize the Delaney Hall so that readers can understand one of the most notable and well-documented historical events that occurred in relation to GEO Group.

BD, does this sound good with you? Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 13:15, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

BD2412? Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 01:52, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

With respect to the proposed added text, at this point I think it is unfixable. It mixes in too many things. For example, the line: "On May 31, Newark mayor Ras Baraka established an overnight curfew surrounding Delaney Hall and protesters were ordered to leave. Mass arrests were then made against 61 nonviolent protesters and members of the press who were kettled, held in jail for over 24 hours, and charged with felonies, with most receiving Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) knock and talks at their homes after being released" has virtually nothing to do with the company, GEO Group. Is Ras Baraka a GEO Group employee? No. Did GEO Group conduct mass arrests? No. Did GEO Group do knock and talks at people's homes? No. This is just one example of content that is outside the scope of this article, and therefore inappropriate to include, by transclusion or otherwise. It would be no more appropriate than adding the same content to Newark, New Jersey or riot control.

With respect to the images, this is an encyclopedia, not a documentary photojournal. Images are supposed to be used sparingly. I can understand that, given the enormous amount of work you have put into the article on the protest itself (which now has twice as many images as, e.g., Murder of John Lennon), this must seem disproportionally important, but this is rather inflated relative to the actual importance of the event, which thus far is minimal compared to protests in American history. BD2412 T 02:07, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

Hi there, thanks for the detailed response. I think you raise some fair points, and my bias is likely playing a role in inflating this event's perceived importance.

So I can work on writing a custom paragraph for this article in particular that will be much less verbose, and once I do I'll ping you again.

In the meantime, I would like to add these two excerpts, which are short and directly pertinent to GEO Group:

{{excerpt|Delaney Hall hunger strike and protests#June 2: Lawsuit against GEO Group|only=paragraphs|hat=no}}

{{excerpt|Delaney Hall hunger strike and protests#June 21: Car hits protester, Father's Day|hat=no}}

I also added one image to the article in the meantime of GEO Group employees.

Does this sound like a good plan? Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 14:27, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

Transcluding excerpts from one article to another is, for many good reasons, something that is almost never done in Wikipedia at all. I see no need to do this here, particularly given that over a relatively short period of, time the relative importance of specific information will shift within the respective articles. The image is fine, although I don't know that it really adds much to the article. BD2412 T 15:53, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

I'm a bit confused, transcluding seems appropriate here to reduce redundancy in written text covering the same topic between articles. I'm not sure why it would be harmful - can you please elaborate? Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 15:55, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

Transcluding is almost never appropriate, for reasons expanded on in Wikipedia:Transclusion costs and benefits. It removes control of content from the individual article, and makes it easy to unintentionally and unthinkingly bloat a section with exactly the sort of irrelevancy that I pointed out in the previous section. My sense from rather briefly looking at Delaney Hall hunger strike and protests itself is that it is overwritten and overloaded with images for an encyclopedia article, and that is not a style that needs to be exported elsewhere in the encyclopedia. BD2412 T 16:11, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

The two excerpts I advocated for including are short and it does not seem likely they are going to bloat over time, seeing as both sections have already been sufficiently covered. So the bloat concern does not make sense to me, and in the unlikely case it becomes a problem down the line it can be addressed pretty easily if that happens. They also do not include any images since the only=paragraphs parameter has been used, so (respectfully) it feels a bit like you are criticizing unrelated aspects of the article to this discussion just for the sake of criticizing my work. The essay you linked is called "costs and benefits", so clearly there are benefits to using excerpts in some situations which it does not seem like you are contending with. I'm not trying to die on the hill of using excerpts, but I think your criticisms don't necessarily align with what I concretely proposed. Maybe we should request a 3O if we aren't able to come to an agreement. Does that sound good? Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 16:32, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

I have no need for a third opinion. Why would you need to transclude text if you could just copy in a reasonable summary of the requisite text, after which it could be individually edited to suit this article? BD2412 T 16:57, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

The main reason is because I worry someone seeking to add information about GEO Group as it relates to Delaney Hall will do so at either Delaney Hall hunger strike and protests or GEO Group, but not both, which will lead to multiple different versions of text covering the same topic because many editors are not familiar enough with the ecosystem to know to make changes to multiple articles when doing so is appropriate. In these situations, relevant information will erroneously be missing from one of the articles. Excerpting solves this problem by directing editors to one location where they can make changes. We can leave a <!-- COMMENT --> tag in the articles reminding editors to un-excerpt if the scope grows beyond GEO Group in either of these sections if that addresses your concerns about bloat over time flying under the radar? Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 17:05, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

There being "multiple different versions of text covering the same topic" is the standard practice in Wikipedia. Look around and see how many article actually transclude excerpts from other articles. This is the sort of case for which I would invoke Wikipedia:Chesterton's fence: until you understand why a thing is generally not done, then you should definitely not be the one to undertake doing that thing. BD2412 T 17:25, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

I understand it's standard practice, and I understand why it tends to be the way it is as well as the reasoning in the arguments you have made so far. But WP:NOTBURO also applies — exceptions to norms can be made when appropriate, and I feel that I've made a case explaining why exceptions are in this case appropriate (directly overlapping scope of the proposed sections to excerpt). Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 17:32, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

I don't feel like we're getting any closer to an agreement, so can we please request a 3O? I'll respect its conclusion whichever way it goes. Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 17:48, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

The content as it is presented in this article right now is appropriate and within the scope of this article, which is on the entity in broad and general terms. Further expansion would merely render the section disproportionate to the article as a whole, which is hardly necessary given that readers interested in reading more about the subject can click the link already at the top of the section. WP:NOTBURO also indeed applies, but in this case means that an editor seeking to conform the contents of this article to the scope of this article should not unjustly be forced to go to a different article with a different scope to do it. BD2412 T 17:56, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

As I disagree that the two excerpts I suggested we add are disproportionate to the article as a whole (one of the two would verbatim replace an existing paragraph that you believe is acceptable as-is), and since I'm not sure that my experience editing Wikipedia aligns with the degree of your opposition to transclusions, I am requesting a 3O to resolve our disagreement and create consensus. Looking forward to hearing what an uninvolved editor says, and I'll respect the outcome whatever it is. Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 19:04, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

You say you understand, but understanding requires taking time to think things through. Certainly it takes more than seven minutes. You are free to seek whatever opinion you want, but you're just going to end up wasting more people's time. BD2412 T 20:14, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

Every time I decide whether to create an excerpt somewhere, I am thinking about the ramifications of doing so. The idea that there's certain drawbacks from using excerpts is not a new concept to me, as there have been many cases where I deleted an excerpt in lieu of writing tailored article content manually. We simply disagree about where the threshold of acceptability for including an excerpt in an article lies, so let's please let someone else resolve our disagreement about the threshold. Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 20:27, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

3O Response: My understanding of the dispute is that Alexandraaaacs1989 wants to use the two transcluding excerpts which is being objected to by BD2412. After reading WP:TCB, I would agree this should not be done for the reasons stated by BD2412. As far as worrying "someone seeking to add information about GEO Group as it relates to Delaney Hall will do so at either Delaney Hall hunger strike and protests or GEO Group, but not both," I think this is actually opposite of the concern stated. Looking at what was added and removed about the hunger strike protests, much of it was WP:COAT from the protest page which is itself bloated. --CNMall41 (talk) 04:20, 16 July 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for the 3O, I'll respect your decision and will not advocate for excerpts any further on this matter. Alexandraaaacs1989 (talk) 15:33, 16 July 2026 (UTC)