U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement just signed a contract worth $73 million with a firm whose executives are accused of taking part in a scheme to manufacture evidence against a co-worker during their time working at the Department of Homeland Security.
According to a contract document reviewed by The Intercept, federal contractor Universal Strategic Advisors will provide services pertaining to ICE’s “non-detained docket,” a master list of millions of noncitizens believed to be removable from the United States but not yet in the agency’s custody.
The contract cites President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency on the U.S.-Mexico border, an overwhelming glut of potential deportees, and a shortage of officers to process them all as justification for hiring a private vendor to assist with the collection of biometric data, coordinating removals, and monitoring immigrant populations.
The document says that with a fleet of new outsourced employees, ICE can reassign hundreds of officers to tasks that better align with Trump’s recent executive orders aimed at maximizing the agency’s detention and deportation operations.
With the contractors onboard, the document says at least 675 ICE officers “will be able to take all appropriate actions to comply with the EO’s by prioritizing conducting at-large arrests, removals, and detention related activities.”
A former ICE official, who spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity, said they were concerned by this plan to further privatize the agency’s operations at the same time as the Trump administration has dramatically slashed its workforce and gutted important oversight bodies like the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, as well as the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman.
“I certainly take issue with them firing career feds and demolishing whole offices, just to hire contractors to do the same work, many of them who are former ICE employees now retired,” the official said.