The New York Times – [no paywall] “Geo Group, a private prison firm that makes digital tools to track immigrants, becomes one of the Trump administration’s big business winners as its tech is increasingly used in deportations…The use of Geo Group’s technology has made the company one of the Trump administration’s big business winners so far. Even as Mr. Trump slashes costs across the federal government, his agencies have handed Geo Group new federal contracts to house unauthorized immigrants. And D.H.S. is weighing the renewal of a longtime contract with the company — worth about $350 million last year — to track the roughly 180,000 people now in the surveillance program. Republican lawmakers and administration advisers have also called for more surveillance of immigrants, including expanded location tracking and stricter enforcement of curfews. Mr. Trump’s immigration policies have sent Geo Group’s stock price soaring and kept its share price afloat even as the stock market gyrates. While digital monitoring generates only about 14 percent of its $2.4 billion in annual revenue, the company, which is based in Boca Raton, Fla., has said its immigrant surveillance could more than double. Profit margins on the monitoring business hover at around 50 percent… For many unauthorized immigrants who are not detained at the border, the perilous journey to the United States ends inside Geo Group’s surveillance system. After turning themselves in to immigration officers, they are given an ankle bracelet, a smartwatch or a smartphone with the company’s monitoring app. Rather than be overseen by ICE officers, they are watched by Geo Group case specialists. Under the program, immigrants live more freely in the United States during a legal process that can play out over years. The trade-off is constant monitoring. Geo Group’s app has permission to continuously track a user’s location, according to a Times analysis of its code. One Geo Group case worker in the Northeast, who declined to be identified for fear of retaliation, described using a Google Maps-like software to check immigrants’ locations. If immigrants were not home or lied about their whereabouts during a check-in, they received a strike. If an immigrant received three strikes, the case specialist would inform an ICE agent, who could increase monitoring, detain the person or expedite the person’s deportation…”