ICE Spending Nears $5.4bn: Donor Firms Receive Billions as Deaths in Detention Centres Climb

Look, the numbers here practically tell the story on their own. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement burned through roughly $5.4bn in contracts during Donald Trump's first year back in office, and close to 70% of that — about $3.8bn — ended up with just ten companies. Several had donated heavily to his campaign. That is not an allegation from a pressure group or a think tank trying to make a point; it comes from a forensic breakdown of federal spending records by the Project on Government Oversight, published last week.

The same year, 32 people died inside immigration detention centres. Highest toll in two decades.

Whether those two facts are connected is a question senators are now putting to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in writing. But the overlap sits there, uncomfortable and hard to explain away: the firms collecting billions operate the facilities where people are dying, and the agency's own inspection regime was quietly hollowed out while the contracts ballooned.

How Trump-Linked Donors Landed Billion-Dollar ICE Deals

The contractor at the top of the pile is CSI Aviation, an Albuquerque-based firm that runs domestic flights and international deportation charters for ICE. CEO Allen Weh, along with his wife and daughter — both corporate officers — donated $460,000 to Trump's 2024 campaign, POGO reported. Days before the election, the company hosted a Trump rally at its facilities.

Their support appears to have paid off. Or rather, the contract numbers suggest it did, though CSI's corporate counsel insisted 'nothing could be further from the truth' when asked if donations influenced awards.

CSI's ICE revenues surged 238% in a single year, climbing from $363.9m to $1.23bn.

Palantir Technologies wasn't far behind. The surveillance and data firm recorded a 297% jump in ICE contract earnings, reaching $81.1m (£67.8m). CEO Alex Karp and adviser Jacob Helberg — who now holds a position in the Trump administration — contributed nearly $3.9m to Trump-aligned political action committees, Migrant Insider reported.

Then there are the private prison giants. GEO Group and CoreCivic each gave $500,000 to Trump's inauguration committee. Both lobbied hard for the 'One Big Beautiful Bill Act', the July 2025 law that tripled ICE's budget and made it the most lavishly funded law enforcement agency in the country, the Brennan Centre noted.

Mind you, none of this is illegal. Legal experts have been at pains to stress that contractor donations do not violate federal law. But critics argue the sheer concentration of cash creates a perception of preferential treatment; the kind of thing that erodes public confidence in how billions of taxpayer dollars get spent.

Thirty-Two Dead in a Single Year

Strip away the contract figures and you are left with a body count.

Of the 32 who died in ICE custody in 2025, causes included tuberculosis, strokes, respiratory failure and at least three suspected suicides, NPR reported. December was the single deadliest month on record; seven people died in detention facilities across the country in those 31 days alone.

A letter from 22 Senate Democrats to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, sent on 14 February 2026, cited evidence that ICE had not paid third-party medical providers since October 2025 — allegedly leading to people being denied care and essential treatment while locked up.

Peter Mina, who spent nearly a decade at ICE before serving as a deputy civil rights officer at DHS, told NPR the expanded population demanded more staff. 'The real question is: in a given case, were there circumstances or actions taken or not taken that suggest that that death may have been preventable?' he said.

Nobody from ICE answered NPR's immediate request for comment on the count.

Meanwhile, the agency's own facility inspections dropped 36% in 2025, even as the detained population soared past 68,000. The oversight office responsible for those inspections was not working during the government shutdown late last year, DHS confirmed.

Where $5.4bn Actually Went

About $3.8bn of the total flowed to ICE's top ten contractors. Those firms operate detention centres, run charter deportation flights, build and retrofit facilities, provide surveillance technology and handle daily logistics for housing detainees.

Nearly 90% of people in ICE custody are held in facilities run by for-profit companies. That figure has held steady for years, but the scale of money behind it has not: the 'One Big Beautiful Bill Act' handed ICE $75bn over four years, a sum that dwarfs the agency's previous annual budget of roughly $10bn.

Some of the same firms that lobbied for the legislation are now its primary beneficiaries. CoreCivic's ICE awards alone jumped 45% after Trump took office, rising from $185.3m the previous year to around $269m, POGO found. The company spent $3.69m on federal lobbying in 2025.

And here is where those opening contract figures — the $5.4bn, the 70% concentration — come back into sharp focus. The money did not simply flow to the lowest bidder. Several major awards went through without competitive bidding, justified under claims of 'compelling urgency' to expand detention capacity.

What Happens Next

Senate Democrats have demanded records on every detention death since 20 January 2025, along with details of any changes to inspection standards and medical care contracts.

Congressional hearings are expected. But holding contractors accountable under the current framework is a different matter; deaths in custody trigger investigations, yet the mechanisms for penalising firms that fail to meet care standards remain weak.

Thirty-two people died in ICE detention last year. The companies running those facilities took home billions. Whether anyone in Washington has the appetite to connect those two facts is, for now, an open question.