Skip to main content
Sunday, November 15, 2026Nov 15
Subscribe
All Sections
Search
More

Companies argue against proposal not to house separated kids

FILE - In this Dec. 9, 2018, file photo, the striped shadow of the U.S. border wall falls on a migrant family as they walk on U.S. soil near Imperial Beach, Calif., after squeezing through a small hole under the border wall aided by two local guides, seen from Tijuana, Mexico. The nation's two largest private detention companies don't want a shareholder vote on resolutions that would prevent them from housing immigrant children separated from their parents, even though both companies say that is not something they currently do. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File)
FILE - In this Dec. 9, 2018, file photo, the striped shadow of the U.S. border wall falls on a migrant family as they walk on U.S. soil near Imperial Beach, Calif., after squeezing through a small hole under the border wall aided by two local guides, seen from Tijuana, Mexico. The nation's two largest private detention companies don't want a shareholder vote on resolutions that would prevent them from housing immigrant children separated from their parents, even though both companies say that is not something they currently do. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File)

By Associated Press 3 min read

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – An activist shareholder wants to pre-emptively block the nation’s two largest private detention companies from housing immigrant children separated from their parents, but the companies don’t want the proposal to go to a vote.

Tennessee-based CoreCivic and Florida-based GEO Group both say they have no intention of housing separated immigrant children or their parents, but the companies are fighting an attempt to require them to adopt policies to that effect.

Alex Friedmann, associate director of the Human Rights Defense Center, has submitted shareholder resolutions on the subject for a vote at the companies’ annual meetings. Both companies have asked the Securities and Exchange Commission for permission to exclude the resolutions from shareholders packets sent ahead of their annual meetings, meaning there would be no vote.

After a global uproar last summer, President Trump scrapped his administration’s policy of separating children from their parents when they are detained illegally crossing the U.S. border.

But in an interview Tuesday, Friedmann said that even though the policy of family separation is “over for the moment, we have somebody in the Oval Office who changes his mind on a regular basis.” He added that family separations still happen under certain circumstances.