Anti-migrant campaign, contracts worth 22 billion dollars to private companies
Financial Times analysis: to support Ice's action and for border control contracts also with Palantir, Deloitte, Fisher Sand & Gravel and Csi Aviation
The violent campaign ofDonald Trump against immigrants is also driving up the business of companies with ties to the administration in particular the Department of Homeland Security: consulting groups, technology bigwigs, charter airlines, and companies supplying construction materials have collectively obtained more than 22 billion dollars from contracts in the past year. This is detailed in an in-depth analysis by the Financial Times.
According to government documents, companies such as Palantir, Deloitte, Fisher Sand & Gravel have initiated or continued - to the satisfaction of business - their collaboration with the federal agencies that are conducting anti-immigrant raids in Minneapolis. The budgets of Ice, the now infamous Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as well as that of Cbp, the Customs and Border Protection, have risen sharply with Trump's return to the White House - Ice's will rise again this year to close to $40 billion, up from $10 billion in recent years - and so have the amounts paid to companies that run data networks or consultancies or that have activities to support the detention and deportation of Latinos, Asians and Africans without visas.
The funding boom started after the passage of the Big Beautiful Bill, Trump's US budget bill, last July. A measure that is back on the table after the violent actions of Ice in Minneapolis and that could cost the government a new shutdown.
Flow of public money
The Financial Times analysis of government procurement data shows that the data intelligence group Palantir has received almost $100 million in contracts from Ice since January 2025. While Deloitte has received new work totalling more than $100m from Ice and Cbp over the same period.
Fisher Sand & Gravel, a group led by Republican donor Tommy Fisher and tasked with building parts of a wall along the southern US border, is the one that has earned the most from Cbp contracts: more than $6 billion since July. While lCsi Aviation, a charter flight broker, has secured more than $1.4 billion in work since Trump returned to the presidency.
