Which contractors or private firms have provided training to ICE in 2024–2026, and do their personnel include foreign veterans?
Executive summary
A small set of private firms have surfaced in reporting as ICE training contractors since 2024, most prominently Target Down Group and Strategic Operations, Inc., and available documents and reporting indicate these firms’ leadership and advertised instructors are U.S. military veterans rather than foreign veterans [1] [2] [3]. Reporting also shows ICE has aggressively expanded hiring and contracting to meet enforcement goals, prompting congressional and public scrutiny about training standards and transparency [4] [5] [6].
1. Who the reporting identifies as ICE training contractors
Investigations and procurement records cited by multiple outlets show Target Down Group received a no-bid contract from ICE in September (reported across Jacobin and Truthout) and Strategic Operations, Inc. received a separate roughly $975,000 contract in 2024 for a “modular training structure” at Fort Benning [1] [2] [3]. These pieces of reporting are based on public procurement records and company disclosures and have been repeated across investigative outlets drawing attention to the vendors behind agency training programs [1] [2].
2. What is known about the firms’ personnel and backgrounds
Coverage notes that Target Down Group’s leadership is drawn from former U.S. special operations and Marine ranks and that the company markets “elite firearms instruction” grounded in “years of experience as veterans from U.S.” forces; the company’s president, Dan LaLota, is identified as a former U.S. Marine [1] [3]. The same reporting frames these firms as staffed largely by U.S. veterans and former special-operations personnel rather than foreign fighters or non-U.S. veteran cadres [1] [3].
3. Do contractor personnel include foreign veterans?
The available reporting and public-facing company material cited in these investigations emphasize U.S. military experience among leadership and instructors and do not document the use of foreign veterans on training rosters; thus, evidence points to predominantly U.S. veteran personnel, while the sources do not substantiate the claim that contractors employed foreign veterans for ICE training [1] [3]. Because the reporting focuses on leadership biographies and marketing language, it cannot definitively rule out any foreign-hire instances absent more granular contractor rosters or ICE disclosure, and such records were not produced in the cited pieces [1] [2].
4. Why this matters: recruitment, scale and oversight concerns
ICE’s mass hiring push and recruitment campaigns—described in public reporting as a “wartime recruitment” effort with large budgets and targeted marketing toward military and pro-gun audiences—have coincided with expanded use of contractors and drawn warnings from former ICE officials and lawmakers about whether rapid expansion has compromised oversight or training quality [7] [6] [4]. Government reporting also documents ICE’s active recruitment of veterans through formal channels like SkillBridge and other DoD/DVA programs, reinforcing the pipeline between U.S. military service and both ICE staff and the private firms that train them [8] [9].
5. Conflicting narratives and transparency gaps
Advocates and investigative outlets frame the contractors as “shadowy” and criticize no-bid awards and insufficient public disclosure, while companies and some officials defend the use of experienced military instructors as necessary for tactical training; the public record cited here contains examples of both lines of argument but limited hard disclosure of full contractor personnel lists or detailed contracts from ICE to settle the debate [1] [2] [6]. Reporting shows procurement amounts and some contract descriptions but not exhaustive personnel manifests or affirmative confirmation of foreign veteran hires, leaving a transparency gap that prevents a fully definitive accounting [1] [3].
6. Bottom line and reporting limits
Based on the sources examined, named contractors providing training to ICE in 2024–2026 include Target Down Group and Strategic Operations, Inc., and their public-facing materials and reporting indicate personnel are largely U.S. military veterans rather than foreign veterans [1] [2] [3]. However, publicly available investigative pieces and procurement snippets do not include complete contractor payrolls or ICE’s full subcontracting disclosures, so the absence of documented foreign-veteran instructors in these sources should not be read as absolute proof none were ever employed—only that the cited reporting and records do not substantiate that claim [1] [2].