Palmer Luckey was 13 when he read Donald Trump’s The Art of The Deal.
Twenty years later, the 33-year-old — complete with trademark flip-flops, Hawaiian shirts and shorts — is one of the biggest beneficiaries of the president’s border crackdown, having made millions from lucrative contracts with US Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
Luckey, who has been described as the “Millennial slayer of US defence giants”, secured more than $500 million in contracts for his autonomous surveillance towers — 32-foot structures powered by AI and fitted with high-resolution thermal and video cameras. They are capable of detecting southern border crossings even in the rugged mountains of New Mexico.
• Sign up for The Times’s weekly US newsletter
Palmer Luckey with the Lattice Ghost drone built by Anduril Industries
ALAMY
His company Anduril Industries, named after the fabled sword wielded by Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings, was valued at more than $30 billion in June and is now responsible for surveilling vast swathes of the US-Mexico border. Anduril netted a new $363 million contract in December to further expand use of the towers.
Last week, a crypto bank he backed called Erebor — another Tolkien name, this time recalling the Lonely Mountain from The Hobbit — became the first to receive a national charter during the Trump administration.
• American tech firm prepares to make fighter drones on the Isle of Wight
Luckey is a longstanding Trump supporter and major donor to the Republican Party. In 2011 he wrote to Trump urging him to run for president. He made his fortune aged 21 when he sold a virtual reality system to Facebook for $2 billion. A few years later he left his role as a virtual reality executive at Facebook when it emerged he had secretly funded an organisation which created anti-Hillary Clinton memes.
Luckey is one of a number of prominent donors with companies that are winning billions of dollars’ worth of public contracts from the administration after a record $170 billion for border security was freed up under Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill.
They include:
Tommy Fisher
In 2019 Fisher, 56, used an on-air Fox News appearance to pitch his plan to build 218 miles of 30ft fence along the southern border.
The chief executive of Fisher Sand and Gravel, a construction company, would go on to secure billions in federal contracts after his bold promise to build a mile of wall a day using a hanging system that could place long stretches of fence at once.
“It’s so revolutionary it’s like comparing the iPhone to a payphone,” Fisher said.
• Pay up to build my border wall, Donald Trump tells Britain
He appeared on TV to make the pitch a number of times, and was open about his intended audience. “Hopefully the president will see this,” he said.
Trump was reported to have personally lobbied for his firm’s bid. Later that year Fisher Sand and Gravel was awarded a $400 million contract to build 31 miles of wall in Arizona.
He went on to hire Tom Homan, Trump’s border tsar, who lobbied for Fisher Industries between the two Trump administrations. His company has won more than $6.5 billion worth of federal contracts from ICE and CBP since the start of the second administration, more than any other company, according to recent analysis by the Financial Times.
George Zoley
Zoley, 76, a staunch Trump supporter, arrived on Ellis Island from northern Greece at the age of three, eventually settling in Ohio. Today he is the founder and chairman of one of the largest prison providers in the US.
The Geo Group has amassed $800 million in contracts from ICE since January last year alone, tasked with helping the administration reach more than 100,000 detention beds by, among other measures, converting vast warehouses into short-term holding facilities.
Along with Brian Evans, the Geo Group chief executive, Zoley has made personal donations to Trump. The pair both gave the maximum $11,600 permitted to Trump’s Save America joint fundraising committee before the 2024 election, while the subsidiary Geo Acquisition II Inc gave $1 million to a pro-Trump super PAC.
Shortly after the election, Zoley told a corporate earnings call that the Trump administration would bring a “potential sea change” to interior and border immigration enforcement, according to ABC News. “We believe that the private sector will play a critical role in assisting the government in carrying out its objectives,” he said.
Pam Bondi, the attorney-general, lobbied for the Geo Group from 2019 to 2024.
Allen Weh
Weh, 83, spent decades serving as a marine — including two combat tours of Vietnam — before he founded CSI Aviation in 1979.
His company is the major charter for ICE’s deportation flights, which in turn provide a vital revenue stream ($1.2 billion since January last year). CSI has also secured private contracts under previous presidents, including Biden.
Weh, who ran as a Republican senate candidate in 2014 and is the former chairman of the New Mexico Republicans, has deep ties to the party. Weh, his daughter and his wife have collectively given about $840,000 to Trump-aligned political action committees, according to analysis by the Project on Government Oversight.
After the 2020 election it was alleged that Weh’s daughter, Deborah Maestas, was one of the five “fake electors” in New Mexico who signed certificates claiming Trump had won the state. She was not charged.
Leave a Reply