For most businesses, revenue depends on customers choosing to show up. For GEO Group and CoreCivic, Congress does the choosing for them.
Buried in annual DHS appropriations bills are riders mandating that ICE maintain a minimum number of detention beds — in recent cycles, language has pegged that floor at 34,000 or higher. The mechanism is straightforward but legally powerful: ICE cannot let occupancy fall below the mandate, which means the agency must contract for, and fill, a baseline number of beds regardless of enforcement priorities, court orders, or executive philosophy. Private operators hold the overwhelming majority of those contracts. The result is that a chunk of GEO and CoreCivic's top line is backstopped not by market demand but by statute.