& I found at least one of the defense contractors named in the Prince memo (which proposed a "skip tracing team" to locate targets) has business ties to a vendor who was just awarded a $7 million skip tracing contract by ICE.

Shoutout to @katyaschwenk.bsky.social for covering this story in Jacobin:

jacobin.com/2025/09/wall...

Private firms are already deeply entrenched in border surveillance & immigration detention. But opening up the door to military contractors, under DOD's watch, is new & dangerous, advocates told me.

& if it passes, it could be hard to reverse

here's the July letter from
@chrismurphyct.bsky.social
warning of DHS's planned transfers of FEMA $ to ICE this year: www.murphy.senate.gov/imo/media/do...

but also important is an Obama-era carveout that handed ICE a blank check for its expanding prison system - allowing DHS to drain unlimited funds from other agencies, so long as the $ was going to ICE detention

this has been renewed by lawmakers every year since

the key issue here, of course, is that both FEMA & ICE are contained w/in the Department of Homeland Security, making disaster preparedness vulnerable to the whims of the security state

this is simply the inevitable outcome of letting literal private jet lobbyists write aviation policy

to be clear, these flights (both deportation planes & swift's private jet) can still be tracked using other public data. but imo this is just yet another example of how years of total fealty to corporate america has enabled ICE to go rogue