Former Blackwater CEO: 'No indication' government interested in mass deportation memo
Editor's note: This report has been updated to reflect the estimated number of illegal immigrants in the U.S.
Blackwater founder Erik Prince said while his mass immigration proposal seeking to remove 12 million illegal immigrants from the U.S. before the 2026 midterms is circulating among President Trump’s advisers, the administration has given "no indication" that they will implement the plan.
“It’s a matter of bureaucratic process, and I'm sure they're trying to exhaust all the internal government capability first," Prince told NewsNation's "On Balance" on Tuesday.
"But eventually, if they're going to hit those kind of numbers and scale, they're going to need additional private sector,” he added.
Prince’s 26-page plan, co-authored by former Blackwater COO Bill Matthews, would require $25 billion in funding and employ 10,000 civilians to manage “processing camps” on U.S. Army bases until private aircrafts are used to remove around 500,000 illegal immigrants per month, according to a copy obtained by Politico.
The information submitted under the newly formed group “2USV” also endorses a bounty program as proposed by a Mississippi district attorney to create cash rewards for individuals who help facilitate successful deportations and suggests holding public hearings for the detainees to spur engagement.
“The management team of 2USV includes individuals and companies that specialize in erecting temporary housing facility,” the document says, per Politico.
“In fact, this group has erected temporary camps for incoming Afghan refugees and for the US CBP," it reads.
Prince notably obtained defense contracts while presiding over operations by Blackwater, a private military firm, which trained members of the armed forces who were based in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The company was also involved in the 2007 controversy known as the "Nisour Square Massacre," when contractors killed 17 Iraqi civilians and injured 20 more people, drawing attention to the lack of accountability for the military's private partners.
Four Blackwater employees were charged with manslaughter in 2014 but were ultimately pardoned by Trump in 2020.
The act of clemency deepened the president’s ties with Prince whose sister, Betsy DeVos, served as Education Secretary during the first Trump administration.
The president has declared an effort to carry out the largest deportation in the nation's history and approved the use of the U.S. Air Force C-17s, traditionally a cargo aircraft, for deportation flights as of late January.
Prince, in his interview with NewsNation's Leland Vittert, said his plan describes how to support Trump’s initiative solving the “logistics issue of, how do you fly that many people out?”
He added that Trump "border czar" Tom Homan and that the CBP team "have a difficult task, and this memo describes how to supplement that capability with what the private sector does best -- find a way to do something cheaper, better and faster at greater scale.”
Instead of current operations, the former Blackwater CEO suggests 100 small private aircrafts be dedicated to the removal efforts.
“The fact is, the deportation flights for years, even when other administrations are doing it, were largely contractor, managed and operated," he said. "They're not returning out of C17. C17 is an enormously expensive aircraft to move around."
Updated at 10:18 a.m. EST
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