Consulting firm McKinsey & Company reportedly recommended that Immigration and Customs Enforcement cut down on food and medical care funding for migrant detainees as part of President Trump's effort to crack down on illegal immigration. According to ProPublica, the firm—which started working with ICE during the Obama administration—also sought ways to speed up the deportation process. The recommendations reportedly worried some officials, as the firm seemed to place cost-cutting above the human cost of cutting resources or failing to protect due process protections. McKinsey also reportedly had huge sway within the agency, enough to ghostwrite a government document that outlined their own responsibilities and justified their $2.2 million contract extension. A number of McKinsey's proposals were never implemented—including the funding cuts for food and medical care. However, the recommendations still remain on ICE's books.

McKinsey's work with ICE ended in July 2018, but the firm signed a contract with Customs and Border Protection one week later worth $2 million. McKinsey also signed another contract with CBP, worth up to $8.4 million, that would keep the firm with the agency until at least September 2020. A McKinsey spokesman told ProPublica that their focus was to help ICE run more “effectively and cost-efficiently," and maintained that their work “did not change as a result of (Trump's) executive orders.” ICE spokesman Bryan D. Cox said McKinsey's work produced “measurable improvements in mission outcomes, including a notable decrease in the time to remove aliens with a final order of removal.”