The Wall Street Journal is out with a report trying to track the staggering $35 billion spent by the Department of Homeland Security in the past year. So where did the money go? Did you guess “sweet no-bid contracts to big donors and Trump pals”? If so, pat yourself on the back.
It’s impossible to overstate how much extra cash Customs and Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement are currently swimming in. CBP nearly tripled its budget for contracts alone, hitting $15 billion in the last year, nearly triple what it had to throw around before Donald Trump took office a second time. ICE has racked up $5.1 billion in new contracts during the same stretch, a jump of 63%.
It’s not surprising to see that a bunch of that money has gone to Anduril Industries and Palantir, two big tech companies with weirdo conservative leaders who have wooed Trump with big donations and got sweet no-bid contracts in return.
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Anduril just got $511 million for border surveillance, while Palantir has notched over $81 million from DHS in the past year for its help in turning immigration enforcement into a dystopian panopticon.
But don’t sleep on the less well-known companies willing to line their pockets by helping the administration commit state-sponsored violence. Fisher Sand and Gravel is here, thanks to owner Tommy Fisher being a big Trump donor. In December 2025, the company was given nearly $2 billion in contracts to build a border wall, which the administration is now calling a “Smart Wall” for some reason.
Fisher got literal billions in contracts to help build the wall during Trump’s first term as well, while also deciding to build a private wall. Sure, Fisher took money for that wall from the scammy illegal “We Build the Wall” group, a grift that netted former Trump adviser Steve Bannon a felony conviction for fraud, but nobody’s perfect.
And sure, the wall Fisher built was so shoddy that engineers hired to study the fence’s construction warned that in the event of a major flood, the wall would “effectively slide, overturn, and become buoyant.” And sure, there was a massive and immediate erosion problem, but why quibble about that?
Fisher has another in with the administration thanks to bribe enthusiast Tom Homan. The current border czar owns a firm that was a lobbyist for Fisher in 2021 and netted $186K for those efforts. Homan was also tapped by Fisher when he decided he wanted to sell his private wall, which is apparently a thing one can do?
It’s also an excellent time to be an amoral goblin who operates private prisons, given that DHS is showering money on those companies as it seeks to build more concentration camps. The Wall Street Journal reported that CoreCivic and GEO, both private prison companies, and CSI Aviation, which runs a deportation airline, have received $2 billion in contracts so far.
And man, life is sweet for those companies. CoreCivic’s 2025 second-quarter revenues were up almost 10% from the same period in 2024, while GEO Group’s revenues jumped 5%.
CoreCivic runs the South Texas Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, where 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos was sent after being abducted by ICE agents in Minnesota. Dilley is also the site of a measles outbreak. Detainees report unsafe conditions, such as poor drinking water and a lack of medical care.
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In a truly innovative private-public partnership twist, the facility will sell children safe bottled water for $1.21. In pain after being brutalized by federal agents? How about $1.30 for a single Tylenol?
Also innovative? GEO Group doesn’t just want to run private jails for babies. They also provide the Trump administration with bounty hunters to track down immigrants. Gotta keep the grift diversified.
Everything about what DHS is doing here is illegal and unconstitutional and immoral—but hey, at least it is extremely profitable for the very worst people.
