Privatized Deportations?

Erik Prince's idea

I saw some interesting news floating around from the usual pearl clutching press. During the presidential transition, Blackwater founder Erik Prince came to the Trump team with an idea to conduct mass deportations. According to Politico:

“A group of prominent military contractors, including former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince, has pitched the Trump White House on a proposal to carry out mass deportations through a network of “processing camps” on military bases, a private fleet of 100 planes, and a “small army” of private citizens empowered to make arrests.

The blueprint — laid out in a 26-page document President Donald Trump’s advisers received before the inauguration — carries an estimated price tag of $25 billion and recommends a range of aggressive tactics to rapidly deport 12 million people before the 2026 midterms, including some that would likely face legal and operational challenges, according to a copy obtained by POLITICO.”

Now, while I am wary of privatizing the deportation efforts, I actually think that this is a good idea. The current set up of the immigration detention and removal system obviously hasn’t been upkept to the point of fulfilling the mass deportations as promised during the campaign. The system is in need of an expansion.

Of course, such an expansion would never have been needed if previous administrations had done their job and made it so illegal aliens couldn’t enter the country. ICE is only able to make thousands of arrests per month. We need to up that substantially.

While people might have reservations about the term “processing camp,” I doubt it would be unlike any other detention facility. Besides, we need places to hold the illegal aliens while we are preparing their exit from the country. We are already starting to use Guantanamo Bay for this purpose.

After all, these camps would be for temporary placement of detained people, not permanent. They will ultimately be taken back by their home country, whether said country likes it or not. Their freedoms will not be infringed upon in any way, because they will be free back home.

While this is advertised as a private initiative, there would have to be someone in the executive branch who this private army is answerable to. They would be using military bases, so probably someone in the DoD or perhaps President Trump himself. I doubt they would be allowed total autonomy.

I am also curious about the size of this “small army of private citizens.” ICE itself has thousands of employees yet is only able to deport thousands so far. You would need thousands more employees whose sole purpose is to root out and deport illegal aliens. Perhaps ICE could serve as the administrative role while this private army serves as actual enforcement.

Perhaps this private army will only exist so long as they are needed. If we deport every illegal alien, then there would be no more need for this force. We could go back to using ICE as the main enforcement agency.

It is important to note that as of now, this is just an idea being floated around by Erik Prince that he had proposed, and that the administration hasn’t made any indication as to whether they have taken it seriously.

I believe that the administration ought to look into this proposal. If Prince is asking for $25 billion and presidential backing, that is a drop in the bucket compared to what we spend on things that don’t benefit the country. I say go for it. The conventional ways of doing things have proven not to work.

The bottom line is this: we have millions of people residing in this country illegally. We need to get them back to their home nations. Our immigration enforcement system has been neglected to the point where such a task currently is impossible without major reform. Either we get help from outside actors, or a radical overhaul is enacted.

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