The architecture of mass incarceration is evolving, and it is wearing a suit.
This week, a plan emerged from the shadow corridors of militarized entrepreneurship. Erik Prince, the controversial founder of Blackwater, is now proposing to detain and deport undocumented immigrants by building a for-profit prison system not on American soil, but in El Salvador. The pitch, revealed through reporting by Politico, is as sweeping as it is chilling. Prince’s team would transport thousands of detainees to a Central American facility partially designated as U.S. territory in order to circumvent domestic legal protections.
This is not a policy proposal. It is a business model. It trades in fear, erodes due process, and exports accountability across borders.
I. The Players and the Proposal
Erik Prince has never operated quietly. As founder of Blackwater, his name became synonymous with the rise of private military contractors during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His legacy includes billion-dollar contracts, murky oversight, and the deaths of civilians. Now he is repackaging that same privatized approach for a new battlefield: immigration.
The proposal involves a newly formed company, 2USV LLC, registered in Wyoming days before the pitch. Its purpose is clear—to establish a logistics chain for mass deportation. Under the plan, Prince’s firm would facilitate the removal of up to 100,000 undocumented immigrants from U.S. facilities and house them in a 10,000-person detention camp within a Salvadoran prison complex. The ultimate goal is to expand capacity up to 100,000.
What makes this more than another immigration crackdown is the proposal’s legal maneuvering. A portion of the Salvadoran prison would be designated as American territory. This reclassification would allow the U.S. to skirt extradition laws and reinterpret deportation as a form of offshore detention. The prison, though leased back to El Salvador, would function under suspended ICE standards, free from domestic scrutiny.
Prince’s team has already met with White House officials. They are banking on legal ambiguity and diplomatic partnership to make the plan viable. They are also relying on the premise that most Americans will never read the fine print.
II. Legal and Ethical Red Flags
Few proposals in recent memory have so transparently tested the boundaries of constitutional authority. Prince’s plan draws on the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a law intended for wartime threats, to justify the removal of individuals not proven to pose any such danger. The U.S. Supreme Court recently allowed limited application of this law but explicitly required due process. Prince’s workaround seeks to bypass those safeguards by redefining deportation as a logistical transfer to foreign custody under quasi-American jurisdiction.
The proposal includes provisions for suspending standard ICE detention requirements. It calls for the leasing of U.S.-designated territory within El Salvador’s prison complex. This maneuver enables the evasion of existing federal detention laws and sets a precedent for turning physical location into a legal gray zone.
More disturbing is the attempt to integrate immigration court functions into this privatized framework. According to the plan, detainees without formal deportation orders would be offered expedited hearings or plea deals in exchange for waiving part of their sentences. This transforms justice into a bargaining chip. It empowers a private entity to influence judicial outcomes and undermines the impartiality of federal courts.
These legal distortions are not theoretical. They are part of a documented strategy that has already swept up immigrants with no criminal records. Once a private contractor is embedded within court logistics, the distinction between due process and commercial interest begins to blur.
III. Follow the Money
At the heart of this plan is a profit motive dressed in the language of national security.
The U.S. has already paid El Salvador $6 million under a prior agreement to house alleged gang members. This new proposal dwarfs that arrangement. With an eventual target of 100,000 detainees, the scale suggests an enterprise worth billions. The document does not specify a budget. That omission is strategic. Without a public cost projection, there is no debate over financial accountability.
Prince’s history reveals a blueprint for monetizing crisis. Blackwater became a multi-billion dollar contractor by offering battlefield logistics the government was unwilling or unable to manage directly. The same principle applies here. Outsource the political risk, monetize the operational need, and secure long-term contracts under the banner of national urgency.
The prison in question already holds 40,000 individuals. Prince’s group wants to expand its reach and capacity without public transparency. A private logistics firm handling mass incarceration abroad would have no meaningful oversight. The border becomes elastic. The law becomes negotiable. The market, however, remains fixed.
And it rewards scale.
IV. Contextualizing the Danger
The temptation to view this proposal as an isolated policy experiment misses its deeper significance. It represents a convergence of trends that have long been fermenting. These include militarization of immigration, privatization of justice, and the rise of transnational carceral infrastructure.
El Salvador’s prison system has been the subject of intense scrutiny by international human rights organizations. Overcrowding, violence, and political repression are persistent features. President Nayib Bukele’s administration has expanded its prison system as part of a broader campaign to crack down on gangs. What is often overlooked is how that same infrastructure is now being positioned as a revenue-generating asset.
The plan to designate part of this prison as American territory mirrors the logic behind Guantanamo Bay. By placing detainees outside the formal bounds of constitutional protection, the government sidesteps civil liberties and reclassifies people as problems to be managed rather than individuals with rights to be respected.
This effort does more than circumvent U.S. law. It actively partners with a foreign government that is willing to exchange land, authority, and human bodies for economic and political gain. It establishes a framework where detention becomes a tradable commodity and policy becomes a procurement process.
No precedent suggests that this infrastructure will remain limited to undocumented immigrants. Prince’s proposal echoes earlier rhetoric from the Trump campaign about deporting American citizens. The legal elasticity of offshore detention raises the possibility of expanded use against groups deemed undesirable, even if they hold legal or citizen status.
The danger lies not only in what this system is, but in what it enables.
V. Moral Reckoning
The language used in the proposal is deliberately clinical. Terms like “criminal aliens” and “worst offenders” serve to dehumanize. The problem is not just the label. It is the fact that the majority of those already deported under similar programs lacked any serious criminal record. They were casualties of an administrative system incentivized to produce results.
This is not law enforcement. It is logistics. And it thrives in silence.
Every incentive in this plan encourages efficiency over justice. A private contractor does not answer to voters. Its mission is not to preserve rights but to fulfill deliverables. The more people processed, the more successful the enterprise becomes.
In this context, justice is redefined. Due process becomes a delay. Human dignity becomes a liability. Citizenship becomes conditional on compliance with a system that profits from your absence.
The question is not whether this is legal. The question is whether this is who we are willing to become.
A democracy that tolerates the mass exportation of people under private custody is a democracy hollowing from within. The architecture of freedom cannot be built on outsourced chains.
VI. Call to Awareness and Action
This is not a drill. It is a blueprint. And if it proceeds unchecked, it will mark a turning point in the erosion of democratic norms.
Erik Prince’s proposal is not just another chapter in the immigration debate. It is a commodification of crisis. It treats human displacement as an opportunity for logistics contracts and court sidestepping. It creates a legal gray zone where no one is safe and everyone is subject to relocation.
Americans must not be lulled by the language of national security. The claim that these facilities are only for “the worst criminals” is a historical echo. It has been heard before in internment camps, Jim Crow jails, and warzones overseas. It should never be the starting point for public policy.
The pressure must now shifts to Congress, to state leadership, and to the public itself. There must be calls for hearings, demands for transparency, and a refusal to let a Wyoming-registered shell company broker the future of immigration enforcement. This is not simply a Trump-era initiative. It is a test of whether democratic institutions will allow the outsourcing of constitutional responsibility.
Every person concerned with justice must ask what comes next. If detention can be leased, what else becomes negotiable? If deportation becomes commerce, who profits when freedom is suspended?
History does not offer gentle corrections. It offers reminders. It offers receipts. And it will remember who spoke, who stood, and who signed the contract.