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Scotland’s prison transport operator has been condemned for performance failures. It’s co-owned by a US corporation supplying bounty hunters for Donald Trump’s mass deportation initiative.
A firm that runs Scotland’s prisoner transfer service is linked to a US multinational whose subsidiary provides the US government’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with investigators who hunt down immigrants.
GEOAmey – GEO Group’s UK joint venture – has a £240m contract to escort prisoners in Scotland until January 2027.
GEO Group is based in the US and has funded Donald Trump. The company, one of the largest private prison companies in the US, is a decades-long partner of ICE and is supporting the current US government’s crackdown on immigration, with controversial methods.
Another firm it owns, BI Incorporated, has secured a contract to trace people for ICE, as revealed by US media site The Intercept.
Billy Briggs
ICE raids have prompted widespread criticism in the US, over factors like its masked officers using tear gas during raids, and detaining US citizens. Its most recent major controversy saw agents fatally shoot Renee Good in her car in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Corporate investigators with BI will reportedly use surveillance to track immigrants to their homes and places of work so federal agents can make arrests.
The private detention sector in the US has boomed since President Trump came to power and GEO Group runs immigrant processing centres in the US.
In Scotland, GEOAmey has been fined millions by the government over its performance after criminals arrived late into court more than 10,000 times in just 10 months.
HM Inspectorate of Prisons for Scotland said the human rights of inmates were also at risk of being violated due to "unacceptable" transport issues.
Billy Briggs
In January this year, a man convicted of raping a 15-year-old at knifepoint escaped from GEOAmey’s custody at the High Court in Edinburgh, before being caught again the same day.
GEO Group UK previously ran Dungavel detention centre in South Lanarkshire and, in 2018, we revealed that it paid asylum seekers held there just £1 an hour, prompting claims of “slavery”.
We also reported that year that the UK Home Office was told that a secure unit at the detention centre was “wholly unsuitable” for people with mental health conditions and that its health facilities were “not clean”.
It emerged last week that GEOAmey delivered inmates late to Scottish courts 10,474 times in just 10 months last year.
Criminal hearings are delayed when people arrive late at court, while witnesses in trials are left to wait hours. GEOAmey said staff shortages, and a Covid-related court backlog had affected its performance.
The firm reported profits of around £7m in 2023 and 2024, and paid out £10m to shareholders over the same period, its accounts show. It was handed £1.8m of taxpayers’ cash in 2024, with a £2.2m top-up due in 2025, according to research by the Scottish Liberal Democrats.
GEOAmey was reportedly the sole bidder for the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) transport contract when it came up for tender in 2018.
Human rights charity Amnesty International UK’s acting Scotland programme director, Liz Thomson, said GEO group was “accumulating massive profits while helping to implement the Trump administration’s cruel and dangerous agenda”.
In Scotland, “serious concerns have been raised that their subsidiary has violated the human rights of prisoners and people in asylum detention,” she added. "There’s no doubt the company shouldn’t be in receipt of further Scottish Government funding.
"This is an important reminder of why human rights due diligence needs to be centred in decision making. The current Scottish Government guidance for public bodies risks future contracts being handed to companies supporting rights abuses and needs to be strengthened urgently.”
Scottish Greens MSP Maggie Chapman said: “No company should profit from human misery and death in the way GEO Group clearly does. It is absolutely sickening that the company contracted to transport prisoners in Scotland works so closely with Donald Trump’s ICE in the United States.”
She continued: “ICE is known for using fear, force and violence against immigrants and people of colour. No company linked to that should be trusted with public services here in Scotland. This kind of behaviour and lack of ethical principles do not reflect the welcoming Scotland I and many others want to see.”
GEOAmey “has failed Scotland badly, repeatedly delivering prisoners late to court thousands of times,” Chapman added. “It is yet another clear example of companies putting profit ahead of people.”
A GEOAmey spokesperson said: "Whilst GEO is a major shareholder in GEOAmey, the business runs independently, with its own executive team in the UK with no operational link to GEO in the United States.
"We are aware of the longstanding relationship in the US between GEO and the federal government through the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. This relationship has been in place for over 40 years, spanning seven different presidential administrations."
ICE and GEO Group did not respond to requests to comment. The Scottish Government declined to comment.
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