No-Bid ICE Contract Went to Former ICE Agents Being Sued for Fabricating Criminal Evidence on the Job

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.

The responsibilities handed over to US Advisors are vast:

“[Contractors] will manage field office alien check-ins, monitor immigration case statuses (and the outcome), assist with coordinating removals, update contact information to ensure that the alien can be located, respond to telephone calls, triage complaints and grievances, manage outreach mailboxes, enter data into ICE’s system of record, manage alien files, capture biometrics, organize and collect immigration related documents, field questions related to the immigration process, coordinate with ICE to assign aliens to an appropriate monitoring program, and notify ICE if someone is not complying with the terms of a conditional release or when someone is a risk to community safety.”

“I don’t like, in general, to attach a profit motive to these inherently governmental services,” the former ICE official said, explaining that while the contract’s scope seems mostly administrative, the work in question has serious implications for millions living in the United States. “This is the backbone of decisions that are going to impact peoples’ lives; it’s a very high impact work stream.”

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They also questioned the contract’s rationale of hiring private sector workers to handle administrative tasks in order to free up ICE officers to hit the streets. “If they’re just doing the arrests and they’re not following the case, not understanding the complexities, it gives the officers a much more limited view of the impact of their work. They’re not hearing when they’re talking about their kids, or why they might need to be released,” the ICE source explained.

The procurement document notes that ICE is turning to US Advisors without conducting the typical competition for the business among other potential vendors, owing to, it says, the “emergency” conditions declared by Trump. “ICE would be unable to recruit, hire, vet, train, and deploy staff as quickly as a contractor can,” the notice reads. According to an April 9 filing, however, a rival vendor is protesting the contract with the Government Accountability Office, leaving the contract temporarily on hold.

US Advisors has the right pedigree: The company has previously provided staffing support for ICE and is run by former Department of Homeland Security officials.

But this executive team, while well-credentialed, has a checkered past: US Advisors CEO Brian DeMore and Chief Talent Officer David Marin are both named defendants in a lawsuit stemming from their time working at DHS. In 2019, former ICE officer Kui Myles filed suit alleging she was the victim of a scheme to manufacture criminal evidence against her after she complained of workplace harassment, resulting in her false arrest, false imprisonment, and invasion of privacy.

Myles, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in China, further alleges she was subject to discrimination based on her national origin, and says her co-workers fabricated a report that she was illegally “housing Chinese nationals” as part of their conspiracy to discredit her. Myles alleges she was then placed under DHS surveillance, which revealed she was not in fact housing undocumented Chinese immigrants. At this point, Myles alleges that campaign to essentially frame her for criminal wage theft was executed at the “direction and instigation” of ICE officials including DeMore, then an ICE assistant field office director, and Marin, at the time a deputy field office director. All told, Myles accuses Marin and DeMore of engaging in a conspiracy to violate both her constitutional and civil rights under federal law.

Myles’s lawsuit is ongoing, but in 2022 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit determined the litigation could continue.

Neither ICE nor US Advisors responded to a request for comment.

Certain ICE tasks struck this source as particularly unfit for outsourcing: “Dealing with grievances — what if it’s a grievance against the contractor? They want to stay on ICE’s good side, so they probably want to minimize grievances,” they explained. “You’re really going to contract out community safety decisions?”

Privatization is not a novelty among federal agencies generally or ICE specifically. Trump’s deportation fixation has signaled a feeding frenzy for corporations like the private prison firm GEO Group, up for a $350 million DHS contract renewal, and Deployed Resources, which operates migrant detention camps and just won a $3.8 billion ICE contract. The source said, “This is the game at ICE — they all work with their old buddies.”

The post No-Bid ICE Contract Went to Former ICE Agents Being Sued for Fabricating Criminal Evidence on the Job appeared first on The Intercept.