GardaWorld’s US$313.4 million ICE contract arrived three weeks after Montrealers protested the company’s role in U.S. detention.
Three weeks after hundreds of protesters marched on GardaWorld’s Montreal headquarters over its ties to U.S. immigration enforcement, the company’s federal-services arm won a major detention contract.
Federal records show US$313.4 million obligated under the GardaWorld Federal Services order to convert an ICE-owned warehouse in Surprise, Arizona into a processing and detention facility and provide the services required to operate it.
The order took effect March 6. Reporting on March 9 showed the project could run through 2027 with options extending into 2029. GardaWorld Federal Services had detention-related staffing experience, but federal procurement records indicated it had not previously been directly contracted by ICE to oversee an immigration detention centre.
The timing gives the February demonstration a different weight.
On February 13, protesters marched through Saint-Laurent under the slogan “ICE tue, le Québec paie,” demanding that Quebec end its financial support for GardaWorld because of the company’s participation in U.S. immigration enforcement. SPVM dispersed the crowd outside the company’s headquarters. Amnesty International Canada francophone later raised concerns about potentially unjustified and disproportionate police force.
Now the corporate relationship those protesters were challenging has expanded by hundreds of millions of dollars.
From contract vehicle to detention centre
GardaWorld Federal Services was already inside ICE procurement before the Arizona award.
In May 2025, ICE selected the company for an Emergency Detention and Related Services contracting vehicle with a ceiling of approximately US$138 million. Only a nominal amount was initially obligated. The award gave ICE a mechanism to order detention-related services from GardaWorld Federal Services as needs arose.
The company was also involved in the Everglades detention site known as “Alligator Alcatraz.” Florida’s contract database identifies GardaWorld Federal Services under a “TNT Ancillary Support Services Staffing” contract valued at US$40,469,728.80.
The Arizona order is a different scale of commitment.
USAspending records show US$313,357,612.46 obligated under the GardaWorld Federal Services order for the Surprise warehouse. The scope is not peripheral security around somebody else’s project. The contractor is tasked with renovating the government-owned building into a processing and detention facility and supplying the wraparound services necessary for its operation.
The Washington Post reported that the administration is using contractors such as GardaWorld as it attempts to rapidly convert warehouses into large-scale immigration holding centres. The shift places firms with security and logistics capacity inside a detention expansion that would previously have been associated more closely with established prison operators.
GardaWorld’s value to the state is precisely that capacity. Its corporate system already sells guards, logistics, risk management and government support across multiple jurisdictions. ICE does not need to build that apparatus from scratch when it can purchase it from a contractor that already exists at multinational scale.
Quebec helped build that scale
The Montreal connection is not merely that GardaWorld was founded and headquartered there.
In 2022, the Quebec government, through Investissement Québec, invested C$300 million in GardaWorld preferred shares at market conditions. GardaWorld said the investment would support its global growth strategy. CEO Stephan Crétier thanked Quebec for backing the company’s “global growth ambitions.”
There is no evidence that Quebec’s investment financed the Arizona facility directly. That is not how the relationship works.
Public capital helped support the expansion of the wider corporation. That expansion increased GardaWorld’s scale, reach and ability to compete for government work. The Arizona contract is one example of what a multinational private-security company can sell once that capacity exists.
That is why the protesters’ target was Quebec as well as GardaWorld. They were challenging the political fiction that a public investment can be treated as entirely separate from the international business model it was designed to support.
A private company inside two states
GardaWorld’s relationship with the Canadian state is already substantial.
The Canadian Air Transport Security Authority awarded the company five-year agreements beginning in April 2024 to provide airport screening across its Central and Eastern regions. GardaWorld values the contracts at approximately C$2.7 billion. They cover 45 airports, including Toronto Pearson and Montréal-Trudeau.
The same corporate system can therefore perform security functions for Canadian public agencies while its American federal arm builds capacity for ICE.
This is not a story about a Canadian company somehow becoming American. It is a story about a multinational private-security firm operating exactly as multinational firms are designed to operate. Capital, personnel, expertise and contracting capacity move across jurisdictions while each government treats its own agreement as a discrete administrative decision.
That structure makes political responsibility easier to fragment.
Quebec can describe its C$300 million as a market-rate investment. Canadian agencies can describe GardaWorld contracts as ordinary procurement. ICE can describe Arizona as a federal detention order. GardaWorld can describe each as work performed by the appropriate business unit.
Each description isolates one transaction. The corporation connects them.
What the February protest was actually about
The February 13 demonstration was easy to frame as another Montreal protest against Donald Trump. The Arizona award makes that reading much less convincing.
The protesters had identified a material relationship. A company supported by Quebec public investment was already providing personnel inside U.S. immigration detention and held a place in ICE’s emergency-detention procurement system.
Three weeks later, that company received a US$313.4 million order to help create and operate a new detention facility.
The protest did not cause the contract, and there is no evidence that demonstrators knew an Arizona award was coming. The chronology matters because it shows that their argument was not hypothetical.
They were objecting to a cross-border security business already in motion. The March contract revealed how large that business could become.
The border still divides the agencies signing the contracts. It does much less to divide the companies selling them the machinery of coercion.
Sources
Arizona Public Media, March 9, 2026 — US$313.3 million GardaWorld Federal Services award and scope of the Surprise warehouse conversion.
The Washington Post, March 9, 2026 — GardaWorld’s Arizona award, warehouse-detention expansion and prior detention-related staffing experience.
Federal contract record 70CDCR25D00000020 — GardaWorld Federal Services Emergency Detention and Related Services contract vehicle, awarded May 2025 with an approximately US$138 million ceiling.
Conseil central du Montréal métropolitain–CSN, February 13, 2026 — Montreal protest date, slogan and organizers’ demands.
Amnistie internationale Canada francophone, February 14, 2026 — concerns regarding SPVM use of force at the GardaWorld demonstration.
GardaWorld, August 24, 2022 — Quebec’s C$300 million preferred-share investment and stated global-growth purpose.
Florida Department of Financial Services, contract E6051 — GardaWorld Federal Services “TNT Ancillary Support Services Staffing” contract valued at US$40,469,728.80.
Miami Herald, July 2, 2025 — GardaWorld’s correctional-staffing role at the Everglades detention site.
GardaWorld, November 24, 2023 — C$2.7 billion CATSA agreements covering 45 airports.
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