ICE Credits McKinsey with 'Quantifiable Benefits': Increased Deportations and Reduced Detention Time

ICE officials state in an October 2017 contracting document that McKinsey’s work has shown ‘quantifiable benefits,’ specifically citing ‘increased total removals and reductions in time to remove a detainee.’ This official acknowledgment reveals how McKinsey’s consulting work is explicitly measured by its success in accelerating deportations—the very metric that drives the controversial recommendations on cutting costs for food, medical care, and due process protections.

The emphasis on ‘quantifiable benefits’ exemplifies the dangerous reduction of human rights and legal processes to numerical performance indicators. McKinsey consultants, trained to optimize for measurable outcomes, succeed in making the deportation machine faster and more efficient. But this optimization comes at a human cost: shorter detention times can mean rushed legal proceedings that undermine migrants’ due process rights, while increased removal totals can reflect prioritizing speed over justice.

Some ICE staff members worry that McKinsey’s recommendations risk short-circuiting due process protections for migrants fighting removal from the United States. The consulting team’s focus on accelerating the deportation process—making it more ’efficient’—conflicts with the legal principle that immigration proceedings should be thorough and fair, not fast and cheap. Three people who worked on the project report that McKinsey consultants seem focused solely on activities whose success can be measured in numbers.

This document provides official evidence that McKinsey’s work directly contributed to increasing deportations under the Trump administration. While McKinsey would later claim it was providing neutral ‘management consulting services’ and ’never focused on developing, advising or implementing immigration policies,’ this ICE contracting document directly contradicts those assertions by crediting McKinsey with achieving policy outcomes measured in deportation rates.