Companies including Palantir and Deloitte have collectively reaped more than $22bn from contracts with agencies at the heart of Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown over the past year.
Consultants, tech groups, charter airlines and a gravel company headed by an ally of the US president have been among the biggest beneficiaries of a surge in spending on Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection.
The funding boom began after Trump’s second inauguration last January and has accelerated since the passage of the “big beautiful bill”, which became law in July.
ICE and CBP have become the centre of a political furore over killings by federal agents in Minneapolis that prompted public outcry and criticism from both sides of the political aisle, with Democrats threatening to block funding for ICE.
An FT analysis of government contracting data shows that data intelligence group Palantir has received $81mn in contracts from ICE since January 2025, while Deloitte, the consulting firm, has been handed new work totalling more than $100mn from ICE and CBP over the same period.
Fisher Sand & Gravel, a group headed by Republican donor Tommy Fisher and contracted to build portions of a wall along the southern US border, has earned the most from CBP contracts, receiving more than $6bn since July.
The biggest single beneficiary of ICE contracts has been CSI Aviation, a broker of charter flights to the agency, which has secured more than $1.2bn of work since Trump returned to office last January.
The windfalls come as ICE spending on contracts has more than doubled to $3.7bn in the two quarters following the passage of Trump’s landmark bill, compared with $1.5bn in the previous six months.
Spending by CBP on private-sector contractors increased sevenfold between the first and second halves of 2025. The agency has reported almost $2bn in new contracted work this month alone — more than in the entire first half of 2025.
Many of the agencies’ contracts are for routine work such as modernising IT systems or providing outsourced data-centre staff and often originated in previous administrations.
However, others are associated with the new tactics used by the Trump administration to identify, arrest and deport undocumented immigrants, or to encourage them to “self-deport”. In some cases, the companies’ work has sparked a backlash among employees.
Palantir, which has held contracts with the agency for more than a decade, secured a $30mn deal in April to create an operating system that will be used for “self-deportation tracking”, according to a federal contract notice.
The company has also been contracted to provide tools aimed at “streamlining selection and apprehension operations of illegal aliens”.
Alex Karp, Palantir’s chief executive, has previously dismissed concerns about the group’s work for the US government.
“I’m going to use my whole influence to make sure this country stays sceptical on migration and has a deterrent capacity,” he said last year. “Do we really have to pretend that it’s immoral to have a border?”
Palantir did not respond to a request for comment for this article.
Deloitte, one of the biggest contractors to the public sector in the US, has agreed recent contract updates that provide more funding for “law enforcement systems and analysis for enforcement and removal operations”.
Its contracts also include updated provisions for “internet research and data analytics support services” for ICE’s targeting operations division. Deloitte did not respond to a request for comment.
Many large tech companies do not have contracts directly with the federal government, but their products and services are provided through resellers, making it harder to pin down the financial benefits they are reaping from the surge in funding.
Amazon and Microsoft, two of the world’s largest cloud groups, provide services to the US agencies worth at least $75mn and $93mn respectively, primarily through third-party resellers such as Dell Federal Systems.
ICE in September awarded a $24mn contract to a third party to procure “hosting support” for services rendered by Amazon’s cloud division. It also awarded Dell $19mn for Microsoft enterprise licences.
Microsoft declined to comment. Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Smaller technology groups such as Motorola Solutions also have contracts with ICE. The Illinois-based group holds $19mn worth of contracts under its own name, while a third-party reseller won a $260mn deal to provide Motorola radios and batteries to personnel involved in enforcement actions.
Motorola Solutions was approached for comment.
Subsidiaries of several prominent UK-based companies also have active contracts with the agencies.
British private security company G4S has had contracts for $68mn worth of work with ICE since January 2025, primarily by providing “ground transportation services” for detainees in enforcement and removal operations. G4S did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Smiths Detection, part of London-listed Smiths Group, which makes screening and detection technology for border control, has earned more than $62mn through CBP contracts during Trump’s second term.
Smiths said it “provides threat detection and security screening technologies for ports and borders that limit illegal activities”.
The surge in ICE and CBP contracts has fuelled a backlash among employees at some of the companies working with the agencies. More than 1,000 technology sector employees, including more than 100 from Google, have signed an open letter demanding that companies cancel contracts and speak out against the US government’s tactics.
Additional reporting by Chris Cook and Michael Acton
This article has been updated for consistency to include only figures relating to contracts initiated or modified since January 2025