by Sharon Lerner and Lisa Song

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The Environmental Protection Agency has withdrawn a legal complaint filed last year against the GEO Group, a major donor to President Donald Trump that has more than $1 billion in contracts with the administration to run private prisons and ICE detention facilities.

The administrative complaint, which the EPA filed last June under the Biden administration, involved the GEO Group’s use of a disinfectant called Halt at the Adelanto Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in California. The EPA regulates the product, which causes irreversible eye damage and skin burns, according to its label. By law, users are supposed to use goggles or a face shield, chemical resistant gloves and protective clothing.

But on more than 1,000 occasions in 2022 and 2023, the GEO group had its employees use the disinfectant without proper protections, the EPA complaint alleged. The agency alleged that GEO Group’s employees wore nitrile exam gloves that were labeled “extra soft” and “not intended for use as a general chemical barrier.” In a separate, pending lawsuit, people who were detained at the detention center alleged they were sickened by the company’s liberal use of a different disinfectant.

A hearing had yet to be scheduled before an administrative law judge. The maximum penalty for the company’s alleged misuse of Halt is more than $4 million. But a

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