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Katya Schwenk is a reporter with the Lever based in Phoenix, Arizona.
The Trump administration is working to privatize a legal defense program for tens of thousands of unaccompanied immigrant children, opening the door for a for-profit ICE technology contractor to take over in partnership with Angelina Jolie’s NGO.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement signed a $30 million contract last week that moves to convert vacant warehouses into mega detention centers, increasing capacity in the Trump administration’s push to supercharge deportations.
In addition to the extensive technology at its disposal, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is devising plans for a bounty-hunting program that would enlist private contractors to help carry out Donald Trump’s mass deportations.
Spirit Halloween’s vulture-like business model keeps operating costs low by snapping up short-term leases in vacant retail spaces, making itself a rare beneficiary of private equity’s hollowing out of big box stores across the country.
A Silicon Valley firm has contracted with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to build out a social media surveillance dragnet. Critics say that the AI-driven software will target immigrants for political speech.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is the US agency charged with overseeing automobile safety, including rapidly proliferating self-driving cars. The agency’s new head reportedly worked on Apple’s self-driving car project until recently.
After being sued for violating state-level human trafficking laws, GEO Group, the nation’s largest private prison company, is pushing the Supreme Court to grant private government contractors like itself blanket immunity from such lawsuits.
A multibillion-dollar deal is set to hand private equity giant BlackRock one of the Midwest’s largest utilities, Minnesota Power. Opponents of the sale fear that this will only worsen the already skyrocketing cost of electricity.
Republicans are bringing a case before the Supreme Court that has the potential to eviscerate what few remaining restrictions on campaign finance we have left.
This year’s congressional defense spending bill would further entrench the military’s role at the US border and, for the first time, allow the Department of Defense to outsource border security work to private contractors.
For years, textbook prices have burdened students already struggling with loans and sky-high tuition costs. Now Wall Street is taking over the market, tightening its grip on a staple campus institution: the college bookstore.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement is siphoning ever more resources and personnel from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, threatening national preparedness for climate disasters.
Celebrities like Taylor Swift have long used a little-known Federal Aviation Administration program to shield their private jets’ flight records from public view. Now ICE is using the program to hide information about its deportation flights.
While extending its tentacles elsewhere, private equity has mostly stayed away from electric utilities because they often don’t yield quick returns. A BlackRock subsidiary’s campaign to take over a regional utility in Minnesota suggests that is changing.
The US Steel plant where two workers were killed and ten injured in an explosion on Monday had a history of chemical accidents. It was one of hundreds of chemical facilities whose risks were hidden from the public after lobbying by the chemical industry.
Led by Delta, many airlines are now working with AI firms to expand the industry’s use of big data for price setting. Using new surveillance techniques, these firms exploit consumer privacy to set “personalized” prices to jack up fares.
Donald Trump’s SEC chair, Paul Atkins, just sold his financial services firm for more than $25 million and is set to receive a huge tax break on the proceeds. He has refused to disclose who is behind the payout or if they have business with the SEC.
Congressional Republicans have delivered on the pro-Israel organization AIPAC’s wish list in the latest military spending bill, including tens of millions of dollars a year for the Israeli military to develop AI technologies.
Some of the world’s largest private security firms are making millions of dollars by aiding ICE with its mass deportations. Now the Trump administration’s record-breaking deportation spending blitz is poised to boost their profits even more.
Backed by tech money, entrepreneur MacKenzie Price is growing a network of private K–12 schools that promises to replace all classroom teachers with an “AI tutor” that students learn from while glued to their laptop screens.