A group of private military contractors have pitched an army of private citizens to arrest immigrants and camps to detain them, according to a proposal provided to Donald Trump's administration and reviewed by Politico.
The group, which includes former Blackwater founder Erik Prince and former military and law enforcement officials, submitted a 26-page blueprint to Trump advisers before his inauguration, estimating a $25 billion price tag to support the president’s “mass deportation operation” to swiftly remove 12 million people from the United States by 2026.
Prince was also joined by Bill Mathews, another former chief operating officer at Blackwater, the private military contractor tied to the 2007 massacre of 17 Iraqi civilians, including two children, which also wounded 20 others. The four men convicted of crimes surrounding the killings were pardoned by Trump in 2020.
The document notes that deporting 12 million people within two years “would require the government to eject nearly 500,000 illegal aliens per month,” according to Politico.
“To keep pace with the Trump deportations, it would require a 600 [percent] increase in activity,” the proposal states, Politico reported. “It is unlikely that the government could swell its internal ranks to keep pace with this demand …in order to process this enormous number of deportations, the government should enlist outside assistance.”
“Temporary camps” inside U.S. Army facilities could be constructed “in less than one week,” and 2USV would supply the government with 49 planes for deportation flights, according to the proposal reviewed by Politico.
The proposal also calls for deputizing 10,000 private citizens — under the command of Trump’s border czar Tom Homan — and empowering them with the same authority as federal law enforcement officials.
It was not immediately clear whether the proposal, submitted by the newly created entity called 2USV, has been reviewed by the White House. Mathews told Politico that the administration had not yet responded to the document.
A White House spokesman told The Independent that the administration “remains aligned on and committed to a whole-of-government approach to securing our borders, mass deporting criminal illegal migrants, and enforcing our immigration laws.”
“While White House officials receive numerous unsolicited proposals from various private sector players,” White House deputy press secretary Kush Desai said in a statement to The Independent. “It is ultimately up to the agencies responsible for carrying out the President’s agenda to consider and sign contracts to advance their mission.”
Civil rights groups are now sounding alarms that the administration could be entertaining the “cruel machinery” of a multi-billion dollar deportation plan with notorious military contractors.
“War profiteer Erik Prince, the same man infamous for spreading chaos and profiting off human suffering, is signing up to help carry out Trump’s mass deportation and family separation agenda,” Beatriz Lopez, co-executive director of the Immigration Hub, told The Independent in a statement.
“Simply put, this despicable plan will deploy mass internment, detention camps, and a civilian army to come after our neighbors, family and friends,” she added. “At $25 billion, this cruel machinery would merely be the opening act in Trump and Stephen Miller's $350 billion campaign of state-sanctioned ‘hunts’ for immigrant families. This initial investment in cruelty is just the blueprint — imagine the industrial-scale human suffering they plan to unleash with fourteen times these resources.”
The idea that Prince could get “within even five feet of the deportation system is chilling,” according to Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council.
“Processing camps and a paramilitary army reminds me of something or other but I can’t quite place it,” added Aaron Fritschner, deputy chief of staff for Congressman Don Beyer.
The Independent has requested comment from Prince.
The Trump administration has received several unsolicited proposals to support its agenda, but officials have also engaged in discussions with military contractors and other groups while relying on military assets — including thousands of troops deployed to the U.S.-Mexico border — and all federal law enforcement agencies to shift attention to immigration arrests.
After a federal lawsuit and increased scrutiny from a federal judge, the administration abruptly emptied out Guantanamo Bay of all 178 immigrants detained at the War on Terror-era military base, which has been turned into a detention facility for immigrants marked for deportation.
The administration also is reportedly halting the use of tents to detain immigrants there following concerns that they do not have air conditioning or electricity.
Trump repeatedly promised to prioritize deportations for the “worst” immigrants, including those with records of violent crimes, but detainees in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody without a criminal conviction or pending criminal charges represented nearly half of the total new detainees within the last several weeks.
ICE arrests increased within the president’s first weeks in office, but the pace has slowed, and many detainees have been released, frustrating Trump and administration officials.
