Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials are issuing contracts so quickly to carry out President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigrants that the speed appears to be causing some of those contracts to be revoked, experts and contractors tell NBC News. At least one of the contracts was no-bid and went to a firm run by people who served in Trump’s first administration.
ICE recently terminated a $73 million no-bid contract to provide staffing support for its offices days after a competitor filed an objection accusing the company that won the contract of exerting “improper influence” in securing it and accusing the agency of “unethical contracting.”
It was at least the second contract recently awarded to rapidly implement Trump’s plan for mass deportations that was quickly terminated. And it was one of several contracts that government contracting experts say raise questions about the speed with which ICE is sending money out the door.
Three sources inside the government contracting industry said the recent terminations have fueled chaos and financial losses in companies that started hiring to fulfill contracts that were unexpectedly terminated.
DHS published a notice that Universal Strategic Advisors was awarded the $73 million contract on staffing on April 13. But six days before the award was made public, a competing company that had heard of the no-bid contract filed an objection known as a “bid protest” with the Government Accountability Office. The protest effectively paused the contract, which is standard practice while a protest is pending.
Timothy Robbins, a former top ICE official who worked under current border czar Tom Homan, was CEO of Universal Strategic Advisors until March, according to his LinkedIn, which says he remains a principal at the company. According to a bio that was on the company’s website earlier this year, Robbins served as ICE’s executive associate director for enforcement and removal operations.
Prior to winning the $73 million staffing contract, the company had been the primary contractor on just one federal contract, according to public contracting data on USAspending.gov — a $1 million contract from the General Services Administration. It is listed on the site, however, as having been a subcontractor on several federal contracts that together totaled $10.4 million.
Nathan Young, a retired ICE officer who runs Utah-based Raven Investigations & Security Consulting, filed the objection to the contract.
After Young submitted an unsolicited bid to ICE in late January, he learned that Universal Strategic Advisors was the only company that was invited by DHS to submit a proposal for staffing support. Once he discovered that he filed his objection.
Young told NBC News he did not think he had a chance of winning the contract but said he felt that how it had been awarded was problematic. “It looked kinda shady and I thought it needed another look.”
On April 18, just over a week after Young objected, the contract was canceled, according to the GAO. It’s unclear if the bid protest had anything to do with the cancellation, and DHS did not respond to a question about why it was canceled.
Because the contract was terminated, the GAO has dismissed as moot its review of how the decision was made. In a printed decision, though, it did criticize Young for using AI to assist him in writing a response to requests for dismissals by the government and Universal Strategic Advisors, which the GAO said led him to cite nonexistent decisions and quotes. Young conceded that he used AI to assist in writing the bid protest.
Universal Strategic Advisors did not respond to requests for comment.
In its initial response to the bid protest, DHS argued that the objections by Young were improper and “speculative” and failed “to state a detailed basis for protest.”
Scott Amey, general counsel of the Project on Government Oversight, an independent watchdog group, said the Universal Strategic Advisors contract raises questions about the speed with which ICE is making decisions, as do other recent decisions by ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, under which ICE falls, regarding awarding business to boost deportations.
“Getting to an award shows the contract was being taken very seriously,” said Amey. He also said that it is unusual for a contract to be canceled while another company is protesting, because generally they just wait for the process to play out.
A source familiar with government contracting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, concurred, saying that canceling a contract days after it was awarded is unusual in part because it takes time and resources to award a contract in the first place.
DHS contract questioned
When soliciting bids to launch a $200 million campaign that encourages people in the U.S. illegally to self-deport, the Department of Homeland Security limited the competition to only three companies, claiming the move was necessary due to “unusual and compelling urgency” related to the emergency at the border, according to a document it posted online.
The campaign has so far spent at least $11.5 million on TV and digital ads in the U.S., according to AdImpact, a company that tracks advertising. Contracts were ultimately awarded to two companies: People Who Think LLC and Safe America Media LLC.
DHS justified the limited competition, saying that the winning companies “possess extensive expertise, have established relationships domestically and internationally for media buying and campaign placement, and are able to immediately support this requirement,” according to a public contracting document.
In fact, Safe America Media LLC was just 13 days old. It was formed in Delaware on Feb. 6, according to public records. Less than two weeks later, the start-up won its first federal contract worth up to $62 million. A DHS spokesperson did not respond to a question about how long Safe America Media has been in business.
Safe America Media is registered to Mike McElwain, a longtime GOP strategist. The business address appears to be his home address in Northern Virginia.
McElwain did not respond to requests for comment.
“I do have concerns,” said Amey, of the watchdog group. “Did they start as a company and was it steered in their direction because of their connection to the administration? If they have ties to the administration, are we really picking the best and the brightest or are we picking companies that are favored by the administration?”
In response to questions about the contract, a DHS spokesperson said in an email: “Following a competitive process with multiple companies competing to deliver the best service, product, and price for American taxpayers, Safe America Media and People Who Think both earned a shared contract for this targeted national and international campaign that warns illegal aliens to leave our country now, self deport, and not to enter our country illegally or face deportation.”
The spokesperson added that multiple career government officials oversaw awarding of the contracts.
Democratic members of Congress say they are now investigating the awarding of the contract.
The TV and digital ads feature DHS Secretary Kristi Noem speaking directly to the camera and differ from previous DHS ad campaigns.
For example, since 2010, DHS has run a multifaceted public awareness effort in the U.S. called the Blue Campaign to stop human trafficking. It includes Spanish digital ads encouraging neighbors to report trafficking as well as ads in airports, hotels and rideshare windows.
Another campaign started under President Joe Biden sought to discourage migrants from making the treacherous journey across the border saying in Spanish, “Say no to the coyote” with messages like, “The coyote took our children from us.” Those ads were sent directly to migrants via mobile devices on social media and other digital platforms.
In contrast, by the end of April, 85% of the ads that had aired for Trump’s self-deportation push were in English, according to data from AdImpact. The Spanish ads appeared to have used Spanish subtitles as opposed to audio in Spanish. The ads have aired around the country where migrants are, but they have also aired in West Palm Beach, Florida, which is the country’s 38th-largest media market and also home to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
“It strikes me as a political campaign ad,” said Dan Hiaeshutter-Rice, assistant professor of advertising and public relations at Michigan State University, who said the imagery in the ads is evocative to Americans who are concerned about the negative impacts of immigration as opposed to motivating an immigrant to leave the United States, “Is that an effective message for people who enter the country illegally? That doesn’t seem to be the kind of goal they are going after.”
A DHS spokesperson said that, in addition to TV, radio and digital ads, there will be ads in multiple countries and regions in various dialects. “Ads will be hyper-targeted, including through social media, text message and digital to reach illegal immigrants in the interior of the United States, as well as internationally,” the spokesperson said.
It’s unclear how successful DHS’s self-deportation campaign has been to date.
The CBP Home App, which is promoted in the ads, allows immigrants to document their self-deportation. Since the app was relaunched on March 10, there have been 125,000 downloads according to Appfigures, an app tracking company. Half of the downloads in 2025 have been from people in Mexico and not from the United States, according to the data.
Homan said last week on Fox News that 7,000 immigrants have self-deported to date.
NBC News previously reported on another terminated contract, this one worth $3.8 billion, under which a company called Deployed Resources was to build a tent facility that ICE could use to hold thousands of immigrants at Fort Bliss, an Army base in Texas.
That contract was awarded on April 10 and canceled within a week. It is now, according to three sources familiar with the decision, being offered as two separate bids: one for the building of the facility and one for running it. It is not clear why the deal was suddenly terminated and put back out as two separate contracts.
Sources familiar with ICE detention settings said that brick-and-mortar ICE detention centers take longer to build than tent facilities, but that they are better equipped to detain immigrants for long periods.
ICE also recently downsized a request for proposal seeking bids on a contract worth $45 billion posted in early April to manage and oversee the creation of new ICE detention facilities. Earlier this month ICE scaled the contract back to $10.5 billion according to public contracting documents.
DHS did not respond as to why the size of this contract was reduced.
