When the Trump administration awarded a $1.26 billion contract this summer to build and operate a new tent city detention center in Texas, it made headlines, and not just because the facility, located at the Fort Bliss Army base, was expected to be the biggest of its kind in the country. The company that won the job, Acquisition Logistics, was so small it operated out of a single-family home in Richmond, Virginia. Almost nobody had heard of it.
Whereas many companies with ICE contracts had long histories with immigrant detention, including private prison giants such as GEO Group, Acquisition Logistics had no prior experience in incarceration.
Stranger still was the fact that the Navy, rather than ICE, awarded the contract.
Trump Bump Four companies profiting bigly from the administration’s deportation frenzy.
- People Who Think
One of two GOP-connected PR firms that have been awarded contracts for a $200 million ad campaign starring Kristi Noem (whom detractors call ICE Barbie)
Contract value: $52 million Trump connection: Co-founder Jay Connaughton was a Trump campaign adviser and has ties to Noem aide Corey Lewandowski.
- CSI Aviation
Part of “ICE Air,” the New Mexico–based company is one of the agency’s primary deportation-flight providers.
Contract value: $557 million Trump connection: Deborah Maestas, a company director and daughter of the firm’s CEO, was a fake elector for Trump in 2020.
- Palantir Technologies
The software company is building a platform, ImmigrationOS, to help ICE track and manage deportations.
Contract value: $30 million Trump connection: Co-founder Peter Thiel is a GOP megadonor who once employed JD Vance at his VC firm, and then backed his rise to power.
- GEO Group
One of ICE’s largest contractors, the private prison company, whose shares surged after Trump’s victory, operates at least 16 immigration detention facilities.
Contract value: $356 million Trump connection: GEO donated $1 million to Trump’s Make America Great Again Inc. super-PAC. Company founder George C. Zoley and former CEO Brian Evans contributed at least $10,000 to the fundraising committee Save America.