Trump Appears Open To Using Private Forces To Help Deport Millions Of Undocumented Immigrants

President Donald Trump said Thursday he had not read former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince’s mass deportations proposal, but he “wouldn’t be opposed” to using private forces to help carry out his vow to remove millions of undocumented immigrants.

Trump, taking questions from reporters in the Oval Office alongside British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, added that he doesn’t think it’s necessary and that his officials are doing a “phenomenal job.”

“I wouldn’t be opposed to it, necessarily, but I’d go to our military people, and I’d go to Tom Homan and Kristi [Noem] — I’d go to the various [people] and ask,” Trump said of his border czar and Homeland Security secretary. “But I don’t see it as being — we’re doing unbelievably and getting people out, getting criminals out.”

Trump’s response comes days after POLITICO published an exclusive report detailing a proposal from Prince and other prominent military contractors, offering the White a blueprint for carrying 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 26-page proposal carries an estimated price tag of $25 million and recommends a range of aggressive tactics to rapidly deport 12 million people before the 2026 midterms, according to a copy of the document obtained by POLITICO.

Top White House officials are having multiple conversations with military contractors, and the emergence of the proposal is indicative of the major hurdles the administration faces as it struggles to find the resources to fulfill the president’s ambitious deportation agenda. Trump’s desire to make good on his signature campaign promise has created an opening for private contractors who see a rare area in which the Trump administration is likely to increase spending.

Prince, when asked about his memo on NewsNation on Tuesday, said it was not a proposal for a “private army.”

“It was a memo generated to describe how to achieve the logistics necessary to move the millions of people that intend to deport,” he said.