The Mom-and-Pop Contractors Helping ICE Rapidly Expand

Even as ICE sparks rising public horror with its tactics and killings, a raft of companies that have never before worked with the federal government are signing up to work with the agency.

Assault training. Blast-resistant window film. Sniper programs. Iris scanners. With tens of billions of dollars in new funding, ICE can’t seem to spend money fast enough, and first-time contractors from across the country are getting in on the cash bonanza, offering Immigration and Customs Enforcement everything from weapons instruction to office furniture.

Rest assured, the heavy hitters in ICE’s increasingly militarized world are still getting plenty of cash. The bulk of ICE’s funding is going to the agency’s top contractors—billion-dollar private prison firms like GEO Group and CoreCivic, defense contractors like Palantir, and advisers like Deloitte. But many mom-and-pop contractors are signing up to work with ICE, as well. These first-time contractors, often with scant internet presence or public track record, offer critical tools and training to help ICE rapidly expand. Their contracts show how, even as ICE’s masked agents launch raids in American cities and public opposition skyrockets, some Americans are still looking to cash in.

Castle Hill Partners inked its first ever contract with ICE in September 2025. The company, run by husband and wife Michael Hill and Leonora Castillo, won a $2.2 million no-bid contract to customize more than two dozen ICE vehicles. ICE said that it didn’t have time to put the contract out for competitive bidding because the vehicles were going to be used by newly recruited officers, making the work “urgent.”

“The unusual and compelling urgency is driven by the immediate need to equip and deploy newly recruited officers,” the agency wrote, adding that officers would have to remain “idle” if not for Castle Hill’s work.

The company does not do the customization itself. In an interview with The New Republic, Hill said that his expertise is in contract management—something like match-matching. “People who would like to do something but can’t, and people who want to have something done but can’t,” he said, “I can put things together.”

The couple seem like an odd........

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