US Border Security Contractors Await Bright Trump Future

US Border Security Contractors Await Bright Trump Future

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The new president elect, Donald Trump, emphasized during his campaign a promise to upgrade border security and to deport as many as 3 million undocumented people.

Leidos, Infosys, and CACI International, among the largest defense contractors in the U.S., have told investors in recent days that they are poised to take advantage of Trump’s immigration policies.

Signs for new opportunities in a Trump administration are already apparent: Mike Dougherty, a former Bush administration official who now leads the Secure Identity & Biometrics Association, a trade group that lobbies for border security firms, including Unisys and Leidos, was recently named to help manage the Department of Homeland Security.

Tom Mutryn, the chief financial officer of CACI, was asked recently if his firm would have an “opportunity to play a role” in Trump’s immigration agenda. “Yes, I think absolutely,”, he responded, the company can provide “a better system to kind of track people in the United States, an IT system where there’s a more robust visibility into people who are living in the United States,” as well as border security systems.

Unisys announced in January that following its pilot program at Dulles International Airport in Virginia, the firm would implement facial recognition technology for John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City.

Unisys chief financial officer Inder Singh stressed that homeland security contracts have become a larger share of the firm’s client base. The company, Singh said, now employs 1,000 employees with security clearances working to “literally screen all passengers entering and exiting the United States through any border.” “We would wait to see what the new President lays out in terms of priorities, but certainly things that we’ve heard suggests that they would be well aligned with what we do today for the country,” he said.

James Reagan, the chief financial officer of defense contractor Leidos, also discussed the potential for the Trump administration to boost spending on border security and raising the Defense Department budget. Leidos border security products, Reagan said, are “positioned for growth.”