How a Montreal-based security firm stands to cash in on U.S. immigration crackdown

As U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration moves to expand immigration detention capacity, Montreal-based GardaWorld is poised to profit.

GardaWorld Federal Services, the U.S. subsidiary of the private security firm headquartered in Montreal, won a $313-million US contract earlier this month to convert a warehouse into a detention centre in Surprise, Ariz., a fast-growing suburb outside Phoenix. The contract could potentially be worth $704 million US — nearly $1 billion Cdn.

The company already helps operate a notorious detention facility in Florida, dubbed Alligator Alcatraz, which is facing legal challenges for alleged human rights abuses.

GardaWorld has not been named as a defendant in any of those lawsuits and there is no evidence of their involvement in alleged wrongdoing at Alligator Alcatraz.

But human rights activists say the contracts and the company’s association with the United States’ Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raises accountability questions back home, after GardaWorld got financial backing from the Quebec government in 2022.

In Arizona, local politicians called for more transparency from DHS, while residents have held protests outside the warehouse. 

“It is not just a local issue, and the idea of a company with the reputation of GardaWorld coming in here and being a part of that just makes it something even more unfit for this community,” Brent Peak, co-chair of Northwest Valley Indivisible, an Arizona activist group, said in an interview. 

“We don’t want that here.”

The contract for Surprise is for a detention centre at a 400,000-square-foot warehouse, intended for light industrial use. The facility is supposed to be able to hold 1,500 people before being transferred or deported, according to federal documents.

The contract between GardaWorld and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is for all “wraparound services,” which includes a range of services from food to medical care to detainee processing, according to documents.

Rise of GardaWorld

GardaWorld is among the private security firms that stand to gain from the Trump administration’s expansion of detention centres.

The company was founded by Stephan Crétier, who took out a second, $25,000 mortgage on his house to launch the business in 1995. 

It remains based in Montreal but now has 132,000 employees globally, and has secured lucrative contracts overseas with the U.S. government, including in Iraq and Afghanistan. The company has been valued at $14 billion US.

Crétier lives in Dubai and has a personal net worth of $2.7 billion US, according to Forbes. 

The Quebec government, through Investissement Québec, invested $300 million in GardaWorld in 2022 to support the security firm’s global expansion. 

In exchange, the province received preferred shares that earn a yearly profit, which will be paid out whenever GardaWorld decides to buy the shares back.

Julia Ouellet, a spokesperson for Quebec Economy Minister Jean Boulet, told CBC News the financing allowed GardaWorld to carry out several acquisitions and invest in its Montreal head office.

Ouellet said the financing “included certain conditions, including the obligation to maintain its head office and its principal place of business in Montreal.” 

“This investment was made before GardaWorld’s involvement in this project (with ICE or the Alligator Alcatraz prison) and the government has no connection with it,” she said.

Contract at Alligator Alcatraz

Alligator Alcatraz, in South Florida, was built last summer at a remote airstrip by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’s administration to support Trump’s immigration policies.

The state of Florida identified GardaWorld as assisting with “detention operations” at the facility in recent court filings, and reporting by Radio-Canada’s Enquête revealed the company as an operator at the facility. 

The firm secured contracts worth up to $80 million US to provide everything from armed guards and secure transport to medical escorts, interpreters and barbers, Radio-Canada found.

One lawsuit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) against Florida and U.S. officials, alleges that the lead plaintiff, who has a valid work permit and no criminal record, shared a 300-square-foot wire cage with 31 other men — a space so cramped it provided only nine square feet per person. The lawsuit alleges he was denied access to legal counsel. 

GardaWorld is not named in the lawsuit.

Earlier this week, a federal court granted a preliminary injunction that requires ICE and the Florida Department of Emergency Management to provide access to legal counsel for people detained at the facility.

Carmen Iguina González, the ACLU’s deputy director for immigration detention, said the country’s detention centres are composed of a “confusing web of contractors and subcontractors.”

Without referring to GardaWorld specifically, she said there are “very real issues when you have a for-profit corporation whose mission is to maximize profit being put in charge.”

An Amnesty International report last year found that people arbitrarily detained in Alligator Alcatraz are living in inhumane and unsanitary conditions, including overflowing toilets with fecal matter seeping into sleeping quarters, limited access to showers and lights on 24 hours a day. 

A former detainee who spoke with Enquête described the experience as “humiliating.” He said guards would take prisoners outside into a cage “to punish them,” exposing them to mosquitoes and the sweltering sun.

The Florida Department of Emergency Management, the state agency overseeing the detention centre, did not return a request for comment. DeSantis’s office has denied Amnesty International’s findings and dismissed the report as “a politically motivated attack.” 

Divest from ICE-linked firms, Quebec opposition urges

Karen Hamilton, director of Above Ground, which is part of the Canadian Network on Corporate Accountability, has been tracking GardaWorld’s involvement with detention centres and has been pushing for legislation that holds companies accountable for their actions abroad.

“I think that there are questions that need to be asked and I think that they need to be asked both of GardaWorld and of the Quebec government,” said Hamilton, who lives in Montreal.

Alejandra Zaga Mendez, the economy critic for the opposition party Québec Solidaire, launched a petition that calls on Investissement Québec to divest from GardaWorld.

“We need to engage to never, never again give money — public funds — to companies that are linked with ICE,” she said in an interview. 

GardaWorld says it respects human rights

A spokesperson for GardaWorld declined to comment on specific contracts, but said it always operates with “respect for human rights, personal dignity, employee safety and rigorous governance.”

The spokesperson said its U.S. subsidiary, GardaWorld Federal, is independently operated and “specializes in logistics and emergency support services for government agencies.”

The annual budget for ICE has soared to $84 billion US — up from just over $10 billion a year ago. DHS said it plans to spend $38 billion of that new budget on detention facilities, with many located in vacant industrial warehouses.

DHS did not return a request for comment. In a social media post in January, the department said the converted warehouses will be “well-structured detention centres meeting our regular detention standards.” 

Still, Peak, the Arizona activist, said the testimony that has surfaced about the Florida facility reinforces the need to block the new detention centre in Surprise.

“I think that the main concern that shows up right now is, OK, we’ve seen what they’ve been associated with in Florida, and is that the kind of image that we want associated with our community here in Arizona? And the answer is no.”