Clients of a Trump-Connected Lobbying Firm Keep Landing No-Bid ICE Contracts
NOVEMBER+DECEMBER 2025 ISSUE
The company’s biometric tech always sounded like it was ripped from the plot of a dystopian thriller, but recently, the iris-scanning system developed by the Massachusetts-based BI² Technologies has become part of the nation’s deportation dragnet.
How BI² landed an ICE contract worth as much as $10 million is in part a tale of the Trump administration’s increasing reliance on controversial surveillance and biometric technology in its immigration crackdown. But it’s also the story of how a lobbying shop with deep ties to Trumpworld helped land a lucrative deal for a company that for years had struggled to break into federal contracting.
Shortly after President Donald Trump’s election, BI² hired Ballard Partners to tout its tech to the right people in Washington. The lobbying firm was about as close as you could get to the Trump administration. Susie Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff, helped open Ballard’s DC office. Attorney General Pam Bondi is a Ballard alum. And the firm’s founder, Brian Ballard, a Trump whisperer with unparalleled entree to the president’s inner circle, was part of the team working on the BI² account.
In August, Ballard’s lobbying paid off when ICE handed BI² a no-bid award for its Inmate Recognition and Identification System, saying it would give agents the “capability to quickly and accurately identify individuals encountered during ICE operations.” Equipped with an iris-scanning mobile app called MORIS, ICE agents can query the IRIS database, which contains some 5 million biometric records.
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https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/09/trump-ice-contracts-ballard-partners-lobbying-bi2-technologies-palantir-biometrics/
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