ICE to spend up to $45 billion on contractors for immigrant detention, deportation

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: USA Today

April 25, 2025, 6:04 a.m. ET


The Trump administration is preparing to dramatically escalate the number of private contractors it uses to help track, manage, detain and deport people living illegally in the United States, with an eye-popping potential price tag of more than $45 billion over the next several years.

The White House has set a goal of removing 1 million people annually, making good on President Donald Trump's campaign promise to conduct the largest deportation operation in history. "If we don't get these criminals out of our country, we are not going to have a country any longer," Trump posted on social media April 21.

Among the newest moves are a $72 million no-bid deal to hire a team stacked with former federal officials to fingerprint, DNA test and retina-scan detainees, help manage intake paperwork and track down high-priority targets, freeing up Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to conduct more arrests.

ICE officials said they don't have the time to hire federal agents fast enough, and will be able to redeploy more than 650 existing agents once the private contractors come aboard. ICE has 6,000 agents, plus additional support staff.

Read more: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/04/25/trump-contractors-ice-detentions-deportations/83250623007/

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"Billion' with a "B".

[Prairie Gates]

1. Procurement capture

The whole thing is an evil scam, gaffling up human beings for the purpose of paying off cronies with detention facilities contracts. Of course, this was also the real reason behind the so-called war on crime - pure procurement capture and pay-off to unproductive rural areas in the form of prison construction and servicing industry. Now it's just framed up around immigration, and the money is federal and large.

[Norrrm]

2. A big money, no-bid jobs program for favored contractors.

Where is DOGE?

[Jughead]

3. Careful

He’s building his own army.

[Firestorm49]

4. Immigrants now. Citizens next. Those who aren't "loyal" will be on the list at some point.

History, and what’s his name’s obsession with Hitler, tell the story. I don’t put anything past this guy.

[Mr. Sparkle]

5. This is a big giveaway to republican donors.

[chowder66]

6. This makes my stomach turn as does everything this Administration does.

[bluestarone]

7. The SCHEME is give these fuckers money, that they will donate

Back to him some how. It's money laundering at its finest. That, i'm sure off. Some how they have gotta be stopped.

[DV1]

8. There's a new Country-Western song: 'Brownshirts and Prison Camps'

The plans are “a recipe for disaster,” said Eunice Hyunhye Cho, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project.

“All of the problems that we see with ICE detention writ large, like the abuse of force, the sexual assault, medical neglect, the lack of food, lack of access to counsel, lack of due process rights, lack of access to telephones — the list goes on — all of those things are going to be vastly more complicated in a system where you are literally setting up people in tents that are surrounded by barbed wire and armed military personnel,” Cho said.

https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-deportations-deployed-resources-tent-company

[angryxyouth]

9. What Congressional bill is financing all of these ICE cost increases?

Budget reconciliation is that still a thing? So Billions for ICE but we may have to shutter medicaid?