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erik prince
Mercenary Mogul Erik Prince Pitched Trump on Private Deportation Force
"War profiteer Erik Prince, the same man infamous for spreading chaos and profiting off human suffering, is signing up to help carry out Trump's mass deportation and family separation agenda," said one critic.
Feb 25, 2025
Private military contractors including Erik Prince—the founder and ex-CEO of the notorious mercenary firm formerly known as Blackwater—pitched advisers to President Donald Trump a $25 billion plan to deport 12 million undocumented immigrants before the 2026 midterm elections using a "small army" of citizens, a fleet of 100 private planes, and a network of "processing camps," according to Tuesday reporting.
Politico's Dasha Burns and Myah Ward reported that the 26-page blueprint for an aggressive mass deportation campaign, a copy of which was obtained by the journalists, was presented to advisers to Trump before his inauguration. The group of private contractors, who call themselves 2USV, is led by Prince and also includes former Blackwater chief operating officer Bill Mathews.
Burns and Ward wrote:
Deporting 12 million people in two years "would require the government to eject nearly 500,000 illegal aliens per month," the document says. "To keep pace with the Trump deportations, it would require a 600% increase in activity. It is unlikely that the government could swell its internal ranks to keep pace with this demand... in order to process this enormous number of deportations, the government should enlist outside assistance."
Top White House officials are having multiple conversations with military cfontractors, coinciding with Republicans' mad dash on Capitol Hill to secure more resources for the president's immigration crackdown. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) increased arrests during Trump's first couple of weeks in office, but the pace has since slowed, and arrests do not always equal deportations.
To boost deportations, the 2USV plan calls for deputizing 10,000 private citizens, forming a "skip tracing team" to locate targeted immigrants, a "screening team of 2,000 attorneys and paralegals," a "bounty program which provides a cash reward for each illegal alien held by a state or local law enforcement officer," and "mass deportation hearings." Legal experts warn that components of the plan likely run afoul of the law.
It is unclear whether Trump has seen the 2USV white paper. White House spokesperson Kush Desai told Politico that the Trump administration "remains aligned on and committed to a whole-of-government approach to securing our borders, mass deporting criminal illegal migrants, and enforcing our immigration laws."
Prince, a former U.S. Navy SEAL, founded Blackwater—now called Constellis—in 1997. He rose to prominence during the George W. Bush administration and the so-called War on Terror, in which the U.S. relied heavily upon private contractors.
On September 16, 2007, Blackwater guards
massacred 17 men, women, and children in Nisour Square in Baghdad, Iraq. This was one of at least several incidents in which the company's mercenaries harmed Iraqi civilians. Trump pardoned four of the Nisour Square killers—who had been sentenced to 12 years to life in prison for crimes including first-degree murder—in 2020 shortly before his first term ended.
Trump and Prince have long enjoyed warm relations. Prince was a major Trump donor whose sister, Betsy DeVos, served as education secretary during his first administration. Prince also reportedly helped raise money to spy on progressives and Democratic organizations opposed to Trump, and was involved in former senior Trump adviser Steve Bannon's fraudulent campaign to ostensibly build a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border.
Last year, Venezuelan authorities launched an investigation into an online site allegedly fronted by Prince that raised funds for the ouster of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
Critics interviewed by Burns and Ward cast doubts on 2USV's plan, with former ICE Chief of Staff Jason P. Houser saying that "the idea of forcibly removing 12 million people from the United States is not just operationally impossible—it is a moral and economic catastrophe in the making."
Responding to the Politico report, Beatriz Lopez, co-executive director of the Immigration Hub, an advocacy group, said in a statement that "war profiteer Erik Prince, the same man infamous for spreading chaos and profiting off human suffering, is signing up to help carry out Trump's mass deportation and family separation agenda."
"Simply put, this despicable plan will deploy mass internment, detention camps, and a civilian army to come after our neighbors, family, and friends," she continued. "At $25 billion, this cruel machinery would merely be the opening act in Trump and [White House Deputy Chief of Staff] Stephen Miller's $350 billion campaign of state-sanctioned 'hunts' for immigrant families."
"We're witnessing the deliberate transformation of everyday Americans—parents dropping children at school, healthcare workers saving lives, farmers feeding our nation—into targets who, if the Trump administration has it their way, could be hunted by an unaccountable militia motivated by profit and prejudice," Lopez added. "As Trump expands the definition of who is 'deportable,' the circle of safety shrinks until it contains only those who share his extreme vision. Today immigrants, tomorrow anyone who opposes them."
"Our leaders face a defining choice: stand against this atrocity now, or be complicit in what history will remember as America's darkest chapter," she warned.
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'Monstrous Human': Erik Prince Reportedly Charging $6,500 for Seats Out of Kabul
The Blackwater founder previously pushed the Trump administration to privatize the Afghan war.
Aug 25, 2021
Blackwater founder Erik Prince on Wednesday faced fresh accusations of being a war profiteer in response to reporting that he's charging $6,500 per person for a seat on an evacuation flight out of Kabul.
The reporting by the Wall Street Journal comes amid ongoing evacuations from Afghanistan of civilians, including at-risk Afghans, and follows President Joe Biden's Tuesday statement he still wants an August 31 deadline for the withdrawal of U.S. troops.
The Journal said that "chartered planes are flying out of Kabul with hundreds of empty seats," further reported that Prince would put an additional charge to get those trapped in their homes to the airport. However, it was unclear he had the capability to execute the flights.
\u201cFor context, that piece of absolute shit, Erik Prince is charging $6500 per person to evacuate them from Afghanistan.\u201d— Fred (@Fred) 1629906074
"After making millions of dollars off the Afghanistan war, Erik Prince is back at it, exploiting people's desperation for cash," tweeted journalist Maria Abi-Habib. "Prince is charging $6,500 a person to get people out of Afghanistan while planes organized by NGOs leave Kabul empty."
Prince--the brother of former President Donald Trump's billionaire Education Secretary Betsy DeVos--previously pushed Trump to privatize the U.S. war in Afghanistan.
Last year, Trump pardoned four contractors of the now-defunct Blackwater who were convicted of killing over a dozen unarmed citizens in Baghdad's 2007 Nisour Square massacre. Earlier this year, a United Nations report accused Prince of violating an arms embargo by sending weapons to Libyan warlord and former CIA asset Khalifa Haftar.
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'This Is Bonkers': Right-Wing 'Spies' With Deep Pockets Infiltrated Democratic Party Across West
"Wyoming's far-right promotes tinfoil-hat conspiracy theories," said one of the operation's targets. "It makes sense that they would use spies to try to attack their opposition or uncover some imagined liberal plot."
Jun 25, 2021
In a "bonkers" report that drew comparisons to a movie script or Tom Clancy novel, the New York Times on Friday exposed a sophisticated right-wing plot to infiltrate Democratic politics in three Western states using undercover operatives.
"The use of spies is an escalation of tactics by Wyoming's political far-right."
--Better Wyoming
"Using large campaign donations and cover stories, the operatives aimed to gather dirt that could sabotage the reputations of people and organizations considered threats to a hard-right agenda advanced by President Donald J. Trump," revealed journalists Adam Goldman and Mark Mazzetti.
Despite some "bumbling and amateurish" tactics, the now-married couple at the center of the report connected with political figures and groups in Arizona, Colorado, and Wyoming in an operation the reporters pieced together through a review of federal election records and over two dozen interviews.
The full scope of information that the spies may have gained access to is not clear, but they attended various events--including a fundraiser at which one of them was photographed with Tom Perez, then the chairman of the Democratic National Committee--and have now generated concerns about the possibility of other right-wing operatives and operations across the U.S. political system.
\u201cThis is bonkers https://t.co/vXSbyX2hnl\u201d— Maggie Haberman (@Maggie Haberman) 1624621509
The expose includes some characters from Goldman and Mazzetti's previous reporting on covert right-wing operations to "discredit" Trump's enemies and infiltrate groups "hostile" to the ex-president's agenda: war profiteer Erik Prince--founder of the mercenary firm Blackwater and brother of Trump Education Secretary Betsy DeVos--and former British spy Richard Seddon.
As the Times explains:
Mr. Prince had set Mr. Seddon's work in motion, recruiting him around the beginning of the Trump administration to hire former spies to train conservative activists in the basics of espionage, and send them on political sabotage missions.
By the end of 2018, Mr. Seddon secured funding from the Wyoming heiress, Susan Gore, according to people familiar with her role. He recruited several former operatives from the conservative group Project Veritas, where he had worked previously, to set up the political infiltration operation in the West.
The "spies" exposed in the report are Sofia LaRocca, 28, and Beau Maier, the 36-year-old nephew of conservative commentator Glenn Beck. Maier's mother worked at the Prince family ranch in Wyoming, where Seddon trained Project Veritas operatives in 2017, before leaving the group the next year.
Seddon, Maier, LaRocca, Gore, and the heiress's attorney did not respond to the newspaper's requests for comment, including questions about campaign contributions. "Straw donations" in which donors are reimbursed for contributing to a political campaign are illegal under federal law.
\u201cThis should be a much bigger story. This is an extremist movement. Look how at the extent to which they are willing to subvert democracy and our institutions. \nhttps://t.co/Zzz0S49ckz\u201d— Wajahat Ali (@Wajahat Ali) 1624647900
LaRocca secured a job at the Wyoming Investor Network (WIN), a consortium of rich liberal donors that quietly supported some moderate Republicans. Chris Bell, who worked as a political consultant for the consortium, told the Times that "getting the WIN stuff is really damaging" because "it's the entire strategy. Where the money is going. What we're doing long term."
Maier, an Army veteran who fought in Iraq, met with Democrats and Republicans--including Eric Barlow, who is now the Wyoming speaker of the house--about medicinal use of marijuana, "which he said was particularly valuable for war veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder."
Barlow, who said he was open to medical marijuana and decriminalization, called himself a "practical Republican," and told the Times that "for some people, that's a RINO." Trump and other right-wingers use the term, which means "Republican in Name Only," to attack more centrist members of the GOP.
Maier and LaRocca also went on double dates with Karlee Provenza, a Democrat elected to the Wyoming House of Representatives last year, and her now-husband Nate Martin, executive director of the group Better Wyoming, which released a statement on the report Friday.
\u201cPolitical spies with ties to the Wyoming Liberty Group, Project Veritas, and Blackwater founder Erik Prince targeted Better Wyoming as part of a yearlong operation to gather intel and make secret recordings to weaponize against the organization. https://t.co/Gcxa7AW32Z\u201d— Better Wyoming (@Better Wyoming) 1624621976
The statement highlighted the financing from Gore--who had been involved in the state's GOP politics since the 1990s and founded the Wyoming Liberty Group in 2008--and shared that Maier and LaRocca donated thousands of dollars to Better Wyoming.
"The use of spies is an escalation of tactics by Wyoming's political far-right, which already employs anonymous websites, purity tests, smear campaigns, and has secretly recorded Better Wyoming staff members in the past," the nonprofit said.
Martin, in the statement, said that "the use of spies is pretty far out there, but so are many of the Wyoming Liberty Group's ideas... Wyoming's far-right promotes tinfoil-hat conspiracy theories like Medicaid expansion causes abortion and cannabis is ruining the daycare industry. It makes sense that they would use spies to try to attack their opposition or uncover some imagined liberal plot."
The Better Wyoming leader also addressed the social relationship he formed with the spies.
"The whole time, they were lying to my wife and me about who they were and what they were up to, and they were actively trying to get us to say or do things that could ruin our careers and hurt us," Martin said. "Politics aside, that's just a disgusting thing to do to other people. But, again, the people who hired them support policies that defund public schools and block folks from getting healthcare, so it's pretty clear they don't care much about people to begin with."
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