Companies are making big bucks from immigration crackdowns

The exhibition hall of the annual Border Security Expo (BSE), held this month in Phoenix, Arizona, looked more like the set of a dystopian science-fiction film. Surveillance towers flashed brightly. Drones buzzed overhead. One company demonstrated a robotic dog designed to patrol borders. Another showed off a thermal camera that can detect movement kilometres away. On stage Tom Homan, President Donald Trump’s “border czar”, praised the technology firms in attendance for helping to build “the most secure border in history”.

As the bustling trade fair demonstrated, the business of immigration enforcement is booming. Right-wing populists—and incumbents seeking to fend them off—are spending more on monitoring borders, tracking down those who have entered the country illegally, then detaining and deporting them. In America, Congress has approved roughly $170bn in cumulative additional funding for immigration enforcement until 2029. Even the European Union is ratcheting up spending. That is benefiting not only incumbent outsourcers, but also a wave of startups hoping to bring new technologies to the industry.

Border control is an area of particular interest for newcomers. Much of that business has tended to flow to large defence contractors and established security firms. Yet agencies across America and Europe have been simplifying procurement rules and running pilot programmes to allow new products to be tested and deployed more quickly, luring in startups.

As a result, what was once a labour-intensive system of patrol agents, radios and vehicles is turning into a digital-surveillance network. Governments increasingly rely on drones, radars, heat-detecting cameras and the like to monitor vast swathes of territory in real time. Such technologies reduce risks for agents and free them up for higher-value work, according to Steven Willoughby, an official at America’s Department of Homeland Security. Instead of relying on agents scouring remote terrain, authorities can now monitor deserts and coastlines from centralised command centres.

Much of the new tech being used at borders was originally developed for warfare. Anduril, a drone-maker that recently raised $5bn at a $61bn valuation, has a $363m contract with the US Border Patrol for autonomous surveillance systems. Shield AI, a rival, has won a $198m contract with the US Coast Guard, and is also deploying its drones on European borders. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the controversial agency that tracks down illegal immigrants already in America, has come to rely on software provided by Palantir, a data-analytics firm embedded in the Pentagon.

The business of housing detained immigrants has drawn less interest from Silicon Valley. But it is booming nonetheless. Already ICE has increased detention capacity to around 70,000 beds, up from roughly 40,000 before Mr Trump returned to office last year, and is aiming for 100,000. That has been good for prison operators such as CoreCivic and Geo Group, which run detention facilities. CoreCivic’s net profit in the first quarter of 2026 was up by half from the year before. For Geo Group, it doubled.

Deportation has also become a lucrative industry. March set a monthly record for ICE of nearly 1,800 deportation flights. Airlines such as GlobalX are profiting handsomely. The carrier, which had been making losses until recently, saw its sales rise by 15% year on year in the first quarter, thanks largely to deportation flights.

Most in the industry expect the boom to continue. Looking soft on illegal immigration has proved time and again to be a vote-loser. Politicians will be reluctant to tighten the purse-strings. ■