(NewsNation) — President Donald Trump said Thursday that he “wouldn’t be opposed” to using private forces to assist with deportations, but officials like Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and border czar Tom Homan are already doing a “phenomenal” job.
Officials are “doing unbelievably in getting people out, getting criminals out, people that should have never been here,” Trump said.
Trump made the remarks in the Oval Office in response to a question from NewsNation correspondent Kellie Meyer during a joint press conference with United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
According to a report by Politico, a group of military contractors, including former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince, proposed the idea of using a network of “processing camps” on military bases, a private fleet of 100 planes, and a “small army” of private citizens empowered to make arrests for mass deportations to The White House.
Politico writes that this would be an estimated $25 billion.
However, when asked about this on NewsNation’s “On Balance,” Prince denied the report.
“This is not some idea of a private army,” Prince said Tuesday. “It was a memo generated to describe how to achieve the logistics necessary to move the millions of people that they intend to deport.”