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blackwater
Trump Admin Planning to Use Private Mercenaries to Shield Oil Plunder Efforts in Venezuela
Erik Prince, the notorious founder of Blackwater, has reportedly been floated as a possible option as the Trump administration seeks help securing and exploiting Venezuela's oil operations.
Jan 15, 2026
The Trump administration is reportedly planning to hire private military contractors—including possibly the notorious mercenary Erik Prince—to provide security as the US works to plunder Venezuela's massive oil reserves.
CNN reported Thursday that "multiple private security companies are already jockeying to get involved in the US presence in Venezuela" as American oil giants push for physical security guarantees before they back President Donald Trump's push for $100 billion in investment in the country.
"Interest is high given the potential payday; during the Iraq War, the US spent some $138 billion on private security, logistics, and reconstruction contractors," the outlet noted. "One source suggested that Erik Prince, the former Blackwater founder and controversial Trump ally, could also be tapped for help. Prince’s Blackwater played an outsized role in Iraq after the 2003 US invasion, providing security, logistics, and support for oil infrastructure. But the firm came under intense scrutiny following the 2007 deadly shooting of Iraqi civilians."
Prince is currently operating in the region, having partnered with Ecuador's right-wing government as part of a crackdown on organized crime that has been replete with human rights abuses.
News of the Trump administration's potential use of private mercenaries in Venezuela came after the US officially completed its first sale of Venezuelan oil. The sale, valued at $500 million, came days after Trump met with top oil executives at the White House to discuss efforts to exploit Venezuela's oil reserves following the illegal US abduction of President Nicolás Maduro earlier this month.
Darren Woods, the CEO of Exxon Mobil, said his company would need "durable investment protections" before making any commitments in Venezuela.
CNN reported Thursday that the Pentagon has "put out a Request for Information to contractors about their ability to support possible US military operations in Venezuela."
"Contractors are also in touch with the State Department’s overseas building operations office to cite interest in providing security if and when the US embassy in Venezuela reopens," according to CNN.
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'This Is Bad': Haiti Reportedly Hired Erik Prince to Help Kill Gang Members
"It's hard to overstate how badly wrong bringing in foreign mercenaries, such as those allied with Erik Prince, will likely go given the current security, social, and political dynamics," one journalist warned.
May 28, 2025
"What could possibly go wrong?"
That's a question New York Times readers sarcastically asked on social media Wednesday, after the newspaper reported that Erik Prince, founder of the notorious mercenary firm Blackwater and a key ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, is working with Haiti's interim government "to conduct lethal operations against gangs that are terrorizing the nation and threatening to take over its capital."
The newspaper noted that Prince declined to comment, and while Blackwater is now defunct, the former Navy SEAL "owns other private military entities." The reporting is based on unnamed American and Haitian officials and other security experts.
"Haiti's government has hired American contractors, including Mr. Prince, in recent months to work on a secret task force to deploy drones meant to kill gang members," who "have been killing civilians and seizing control of vast areas of territory" in the Caribbean country, the Times detailed.
"Mr. Prince's team has been operating the drones since March, but the authorities have yet to announce the death or capture of a single high-value target," according to the paper. Pierre Espérance, executive director of the National Human Rights Defense Network in Haiti, said the drone attacks have killed more than 200 people.
American journalist Michael Deibert said on social media, "If this story is accurate, on what authority does Haiti's unelected, temporary interim [government] invite foreign forces into the country and by what means—with whose money—do they intend to pay them for their work there?"
The U.S. State Department has poured millions into Haiti's National Police but told the Times it is not paying Prince.
Deibert said that "as someone who has reported on Haiti's armed groups for 25 years, it's hard to overstate how badly wrong bringing in foreign mercenaries, such as those allied with Erik Prince, will likely go given the current security, social, and political dynamics in the country."
This is Bad. Like Capital B. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/28/u...
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— r: The Alignment Problem, Christian (@jacky.wtf) May 28, 2025 at 5:44 PM
Also weighing in on social media, Keanu Heydari, a history Ph.D. candidate at the University of Michigan, said: "A lot's going on here! A majority-Black nation, hollowed out by decades of foreign intervention, 'turning to' a white war profiteer to restore 'order.' That is not about logistics, this is about coloniality."
Heydari continued:
This isn't a story about drones and gangs. It's about how the world has made it structurally impossible for Haiti to govern itself—then offers mercenaries as a "solution." Haiti's sovereignty has been chipped away by debt, coups, U.N. missions, and now private warlords.
Why does Erik Prince show up where Black and Brown countries are in crisis? Because the global market rewards violence disguised as security, especially when it's sold by Westerners to postcolonial states. It's racial capitalism in full view.
The NYT missed the story: This isn't a desperate government making tough choices. It's a story of empire outsourcing control, where mercenaries profit from the very chaos empire helped produce. Haiti deserves justice, not occupation by other means.
The Times article follows The Economist's reporting earlier this month that Haiti's interim government, the Transitional Presidential Council, "is so desperate that it is exploring deals with private military contractors. It has been talking to Osprey Global Solutions, a firm based in North Carolina. The founder of Blackwater, Erik Prince, visited Haiti in April to negotiate contracts to provide attack drones and training for an anti-gang task force. The council declined to comment."
In response to that paragraph in the May 7 article, Jake Johnston, director of international research at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and author of Aid State: Elite Panic, Disaster Capitalism, and the Battle to Control Haiti, also asked, "What could possibly go wrong?"
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Mercenary Mogul Erik Prince Pitched Trump on Private Deportation Force
"War profiteer Erik Prince, the same man infamous for spreading chaos and profiting off human suffering, is signing up to help carry out Trump's mass deportation and family separation agenda," said one critic.
Feb 25, 2025
Private military contractors including Erik Prince—the founder and ex-CEO of the notorious mercenary firm formerly known as Blackwater—pitched advisers to President Donald Trump a $25 billion plan to deport 12 million undocumented immigrants before the 2026 midterm elections using a "small army" of citizens, a fleet of 100 private planes, and a network of "processing camps," according to Tuesday reporting.
Politico's Dasha Burns and Myah Ward reported that the 26-page blueprint for an aggressive mass deportation campaign, a copy of which was obtained by the journalists, was presented to advisers to Trump before his inauguration. The group of private contractors, who call themselves 2USV, is led by Prince and also includes former Blackwater chief operating officer Bill Mathews.
Burns and Ward wrote:
Deporting 12 million people in two years "would require the government to eject nearly 500,000 illegal aliens per month," the document says. "To keep pace with the Trump deportations, it would require a 600% increase in activity. It is unlikely that the government could swell its internal ranks to keep pace with this demand... in order to process this enormous number of deportations, the government should enlist outside assistance."
Top White House officials are having multiple conversations with military cfontractors, coinciding with Republicans' mad dash on Capitol Hill to secure more resources for the president's immigration crackdown. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) increased arrests during Trump's first couple of weeks in office, but the pace has since slowed, and arrests do not always equal deportations.
To boost deportations, the 2USV plan calls for deputizing 10,000 private citizens, forming a "skip tracing team" to locate targeted immigrants, a "screening team of 2,000 attorneys and paralegals," a "bounty program which provides a cash reward for each illegal alien held by a state or local law enforcement officer," and "mass deportation hearings." Legal experts warn that components of the plan likely run afoul of the law.
It is unclear whether Trump has seen the 2USV white paper. White House spokesperson Kush Desai told Politico that the Trump administration "remains aligned on and committed to a whole-of-government approach to securing our borders, mass deporting criminal illegal migrants, and enforcing our immigration laws."
Prince, a former U.S. Navy SEAL, founded Blackwater—now called Constellis—in 1997. He rose to prominence during the George W. Bush administration and the so-called War on Terror, in which the U.S. relied heavily upon private contractors.
On September 16, 2007, Blackwater guards
massacred 17 men, women, and children in Nisour Square in Baghdad, Iraq. This was one of at least several incidents in which the company's mercenaries harmed Iraqi civilians. Trump pardoned four of the Nisour Square killers—who had been sentenced to 12 years to life in prison for crimes including first-degree murder—in 2020 shortly before his first term ended.
Trump and Prince have long enjoyed warm relations. Prince was a major Trump donor whose sister, Betsy DeVos, served as education secretary during his first administration. Prince also reportedly helped raise money to spy on progressives and Democratic organizations opposed to Trump, and was involved in former senior Trump adviser Steve Bannon's fraudulent campaign to ostensibly build a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border.
Last year, Venezuelan authorities launched an investigation into an online site allegedly fronted by Prince that raised funds for the ouster of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
Critics interviewed by Burns and Ward cast doubts on 2USV's plan, with former ICE Chief of Staff Jason P. Houser saying that "the idea of forcibly removing 12 million people from the United States is not just operationally impossible—it is a moral and economic catastrophe in the making."
Responding to the Politico report, Beatriz Lopez, co-executive director of the Immigration Hub, an advocacy group, said in a statement that "war profiteer Erik Prince, the same man infamous for spreading chaos and profiting off human suffering, is signing up to help carry out Trump's mass deportation and family separation agenda."
"Simply put, this despicable plan will deploy mass internment, detention camps, and a civilian army to come after our neighbors, family, and friends," she continued. "At $25 billion, this cruel machinery would merely be the opening act in Trump and [White House Deputy Chief of Staff] Stephen Miller's $350 billion campaign of state-sanctioned 'hunts' for immigrant families."
"We're witnessing the deliberate transformation of everyday Americans—parents dropping children at school, healthcare workers saving lives, farmers feeding our nation—into targets who, if the Trump administration has it their way, could be hunted by an unaccountable militia motivated by profit and prejudice," Lopez added. "As Trump expands the definition of who is 'deportable,' the circle of safety shrinks until it contains only those who share his extreme vision. Today immigrants, tomorrow anyone who opposes them."
"Our leaders face a defining choice: stand against this atrocity now, or be complicit in what history will remember as America's darkest chapter," she warned.
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