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Katya Schwenk is a reporter with the Lever based in Phoenix, Arizona.
When the Department of Homeland Security was first created, Congress established a civil-rights watchdog office for DHS and its various arms, including ICE. Amid mounting concerns about DHS’s rights violations, Trump has been erasing the oversight office.
Lucrative deals selling empty warehouses to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the Trump administration’s mass deportation machine are being quietly facilitated by a handful of powerful real estate brokers.
Three years after the toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, the railroad, lawyers, and myriad companies involved in a $600 million class action settlement have all been paid — while many residents have yet to receive anything.
To reduce ICE misconduct, Democratic legislators propose that its agents be required to wear body cameras. Evidence of body camera efficacy is remarkably thin, but weapons technology companies are set to make millions from the “reform.”
Wall Street and the crypto industry are engaged in a legislative battle over which business interests will get to fleece more of their customers’ money, with big banks hoping to close a loophole that allows cryptocurrencies to pay interest to investors.
A variety of shadowy private security and weapons firms have been tapped to provide firearms and combat training to ICE agents. They are among the many private entities lining up for their cut of the Trump administration’s deportation spending blitz.
A former X executive behind Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot, now serving as US Patent Office chief AI officer, has received a “highly unusual” carveout that allows him to retain company shares while influencing AI policy.
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.