Jim Jordan is among the most famous names in this stretch of Ohio.

The congressman and chair of the powerful House judiciary committee is considered among the most conservative and influential members in Congress, and is a longtime loyalist of Donald Trump.

But a report released last month by Pogo Investigates, a nonprofit newsroom, highlighted the close ties between Jordan and a company profiting from the Trump administration’s anti-immigration crackdown, which has sometimes been violent and even deadly.

The report found that the American Liberty Foundation, a political action committee (Pac) tied to Jordan, last year received $250,000 in “dark money” payments from Geo Group, the Florida-headquartered company that runs dozens of detention centers on behalf of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) across the country.

The money transfer came 11 days after the passing of the president’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act last July, which saw the federal government’s budget for ICE and other immigration enforcement efforts trebled to $170bn – an amount greater than the GDP of Morocco.

“A company and or a company’s political action committee is permitted to contribute funds to a Super Pac, but a federal contractor [such as Geo Group] is not,” says Nick Schwellenbach, the author of the Pogo Investigates report.

“Geo Group’s Pachad not disclosed this. Only American Liberty Foundation had. Both have legal obligations to disclose. This raises a lot of questions about the broader universe of dark money contributions from Geo Group or other private prison companies.”

Campaign Legal Center, a litigation advocacy organization, has since filed a complaint to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) against Geo Group, alleging it violated federal campaign finance laws by making an illegal, misreported contribution.

Critics say that taxpayer money is helping to create a “deportation-industrial complex” that puts Geo Group, which runs ICE detention facilities across 16 states, including Delaney Hall in New Jersey, at the forefront of the benefactors.

All the while, conditions at many of the 52 detention centers that Geo operates on behalf of ICE have been reported as being very poor. Detainees at Delaney Hall last month launched a hunger strike to protest against the state of their living conditions and accused the contractor of denying them access to medical care. This month, the state of New Jersey sued Geo Group, seeking full access in order to inspect the facility.

In Michigan, family members and friends of the estimated 1,500 immigrant detainees held at the North Lake Processing Center have reported being verbally abused by staff and refused permission to see their detained family members.

Repeated emails sent by the Guardian to Geo Group asking why the company donated to Jordan’s Super Pac and if it believes the money represents a conflict of interest were not responded to.

Some rights groups have suggested that the poor living conditions are a tactic to force immigrants to self-deport. Trump’s former attorney general, Pam Bondi, previously worked as a lobbyist for Geo Group before joining the Trump administration.

According to reports, ICE is Geo Group’s biggest source of revenue, with 41% of its 2024 income coming from ICE. That figure is likely to have risen significantly under the Trump administration, with a host of new contracts signed.

While in 2024 – the final year of the Biden administration – it posted a net income of $31.9m, last year that figure rocketed to $254.3m under the Trump White House.

“Last year was the most successful period for new business wins in our Company’s history with new or expanded contracts representing up to $520m in annualized revenues,” Geo Group’s founder and CEO, George Zoley, was quoted as saying in a recent report to investors. Zoley was born in Greece before his family immigrated to Ohio.

Late last year, it also received a two-year, $60m contract from ICE for skip tracing services that will be used to find and likely detain thousands of undocumented immigrants around the country.

On 10 June, Trump signed off on a $70bn immigration funding package that includes $38bn for ICE operations.

But despite the millions of dollars it’s receiving in taxpayer money, by the end of 2025, the company was struggling to get out from under $1.61bn in debt, according to its own reporting. Since Trump returned to the White House, however, Geo Group has been able to reopen 6,000 new detention beds at facilities in New Jersey, Michigan and Georgia, which were previously idled and therefore loss-making.

The close ties between Geo Group and the Trump administration are unsettling, say legal experts.

“A huge part of their business is contracts with the federal government. As a result of that work, they are categorically barred from making political contributions,” says Saurav Ghosh, Campaign Legal Center’s director of federal campaign finance reform.

“Dark money is an incredibly significant problem in our elections. For the 2024 election, the last cycle we have complete data for, the figure that’s been floated is $1.9bn. It is a really shocking amount of money to be spent on election influence, where we simply can trace it.”

These policies have also put huge sums of cash in Republican politicians’ own pockets.

Jordan, a ten-term congressman, represents more than 810,000 residents across west-central Ohio. While the district Jordan represents has been heavily gerrymandered to favor rural, conservative voters, this year he faces challenges to his congressional seat in a November election from both a Democrat and an Independent.

There are no ways to contact the American Liberty Foundation or the American Liberty Action Fund through their websites, which claim they are “not authorized by any candidate”. However, numerous reports suggest they are run by Columbus-based lobbyists who are former Jordan congressional staffers.

“[The Geo Group donation is] proof that he is in favor of incarceration that is for profit. It’s a common thing that happens in Congress that I would want to eliminate. It’s one of the things that is wrong with the system,” says Josh Kolasinski, a small business owner running against Jordan as a Democrat in November.

“People say they like him, but when I ask them what he has done for them, they draw a blank. I think they see him on TV and they like the partisan theatre that he portrays.”

Emails sent by the Guardian to Jordan’s communications director asking for details on his relationship with these Super Pacs, and whether he thinks the Geo Group donation represents a conflict of interest, were not responded to.

Before entering politics, Jordan was an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State University during some of the years that Richard Strauss, a medical doctor, sexually abused hundreds of male wrestling athletes. Jordan has for years denied any knowledge of the abuse, but the university has recently settled with dozens of victims for hundreds of millions of dollars.

“This is Jordan country. To the [Maga] cult, it’s not that he’s been caught in the act, but that he’s fulfilling his promise,” says Bob Puglia, a democrat who lives in Urbana, Jordan’s home town.

“The pain his supporters endure at his hands and those of his ilk is blamed on anyone else. Is he likely to win [the November election]? By design, he is an inevitability.”

For Jordan, voting in support of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last July was the latest in a long history of lining up behind Trump.

Following the 2020 presidential election, the 62-year-old mounted a vigorous campaign to discredit Joe Biden’s win. Observers say his blind support for Trump played a significant role in Jordan’s failed efforts to become the Republicans’ speaker of the House in 2023.