Crowley Political Report

Last year, students and faculty at Florida Atlantic University loudly protested when its football stadium was going to be named after the GEO Group. The Boca Raton prison company was willing to pay $6 million for the naming rights.

Protesters slammed the decision because of reports of poor treatment of prisoners - many of whom are immigrants - at some of the company's prisons. GEO pulled out of the deal after getting hammered.

Even Stephen Colbert weighed in:

Now, Mother Jones is reporting that Scott's campaign is having a $10,000 per-person fundraiser at the Boca Raton home of GEO chairman George Zoley. Mother Jones describes Zoley as "the CEO of a private prison company that's profiting handsomely over the immigration crisis at the Mexican border."

The report continues: 

Among the 98 facilities the company owns or manages are several detention centers for undocumented immigrants run through contracts with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. One of those is a facility in Broward County, Florida, that's been the site of at least one hunger strike and protests over allegedly poor treatment of the 700 immigrants held there, most of whom have no serious criminal histories.

In 2012, members of Congress demanded that ICE investigate the Broward facility after reports the center was holding people who should have been released and that it was not providing adequate medical care to the detainees. An investigation last year by Americans for Immigrant Justice also found credible reports of detainees suffering food poisoning from being served rotten food. The group noted instances of sexual assault among detainees and inadequate mental health care that may have contributed to at least three suicide attempts. Detainees also reported being forced to work for $1 a day and to pay $3 a minute for phone calls.

The Geo Group, which rakes in $1.5 billion in annual revenue, earns $20 million annually just from the Florida center.

Read the complete Mother Jones  story here.

One suspects it is not going to take long for Scott's Democrat rival, former Governor Charlie Crist, to start attacking Scott for this fundraiser.