BRITISH privatiser Serco has contracts the firm claimed put it at the heart of training officers for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice). In the wake of Ice agents causing outrage by killing protesters, Serco became embarrassed by its involvement with the agency, removing all mention of its Ice work from its company website.

Much of President Donald Trump’s massive $29-billion-a-year Ice budget flows to controversial US private security firms like Geo and CoreCivic. But Serco, which has been criticised in Britain for poor performance and even major fraud, has also become an Ice contractor.

Serco’s website claimed it “provided full training lifecycle support for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), training more than 400,000 DHS students in all areas,” including a “17-week curriculum for new officers in Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO).” ERO is the Ice action that caused violent confrontations in Minneapolis.  

The poor training — or lack of training — of Ice officers was a key criticism of the agency. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz condemned the “thousands of violent, untrained officers” from Ice sent by Trump for street raids in Minneapolis. US think tank the Brookings Institute accused Ice of “watering down of hiring and training standards,” with more agents getting less training and emphasis on “tactical and operational drills” rather than “de-escalation” contributing to their undisciplined violence.

Serco boasted about its Ice training contract because it wanted to use its involvement with this Trump-favoured agency to boost its US business. However, the firm became extremely embarrassed about these boasts after Ice agents killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti, causing widespread protests.  

When I questioned the firm about its Ice training contracts, Serco immediately deleted all mention of its Ice work from its own website.

The firm suggested its US team had exaggerated its Ice work. After deleting the previous website statement, Serco told me: “We do not train Ice employees, our role is purely administrative curriculum design.” Rather than training Ice field agents directly, Serco was hired to help design Ice’s training curriculum. Serco was awarded a five-yearcontract worth $9.7 million in 2018, during Trump’s first term. It currently has another Ice curriculum contract worth $766,000.

Serco has long attracted criticism. In 2021, then-shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves condemned Serco being given contracts to run key anti-Covid services. She said the work was “being outsourced to a large private company like Serco, which has a poor track record and known links to the Conservative Party.”

In 2020 Reeves’s message was a two-word tweet — “Sack Serco.”

Now Reeves is in government, she has dropped her criticism, as she and Serco appear to have buried their former differences.

Serco’s security experience includes running some British prisons, including HMP Thameside, which holds 1,200 men in south-east London. Last year the chief inspector of prisons criticised Serco’s prison, saying that “levels of violence had increased and too much of it was serious in nature” at its jail.

The inspectors found prisoners at risk of suicide “did not get good enough support” and there were “unusually serious weaknesses in healthcare.”

This February the inspector found some improvements, but said: “Progress in addressing our concerns about safety had been slower. Levels of violence between prisoners remained stubbornly high and too much of this was still serious. Although there were now more consequences for poor behaviour, the prison offered little to incentivise prisoners to behave well. Drugs were still too easily available.”

Serco told me that HMP Thameside has “a better regime than at most reception prisons,” adding: “We are proud of HMP Thameside which is the best performing local prison in London and we will continue to make improvements.”

Serco also runs immigration detention centres, including Brook House at Gatwick Airport. In a November 2025 report the Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) criticised Serco.

The IMB — previously called the Boards of Visitors — is a key part of the justice system which has been running for over 70 years. It is made up of lay volunteers appointed by the Ministry of Justice to check detention conditions are fair, just and humane.

The IMB said Serco staff used handcuffs in a “highly inappropriate” way at Brook House, amounting to “coercion.” It said Serco trainers “adopted a notably ‘macho’ approach,” reporting that “in one session, a trainer told officers that ‘If someone’s coming at me, I’m going to keep myself safe. I don’t worry about what’s proportionate, I won’t worry about Serco or my job, my priority is to look after myself’.”

The IMB said these remarks “reflect a complete disregard for the core principles of proportionality and accountability.”

Serco would not accept the IMB’s findings, telling me that “this report is full of unevidenced assertions and unsubstantiated comments which do not reflect our professional training or how we treat people in our care.”

Serco also has a huge and much-criticised contract to house around 42,0000 asylum-seekers in Britain in run-down hotels and houses.

The Home Office estimates it will pay Serco £5.5bn between 2019 and 2029, more double the original estimate. The home affairs select committee was very critical of government management of this and other asylum accommodation contracts, saying costs were not controlled and there are “too many cases where asylum accommodation is not of an adequate standard, and safeguarding concerns relating to vulnerable people in accommodation have not been addressed.”  

Serco said: “We take our obligations to provide safe and decent accommodation extremely seriously. Where issues are reported, our team address them as quickly as possible.”

Serco’s most famous scandal came in 2013, when the firm was found claiming money on a huge electronic tagging contract for prisoners released on licence who simply had not been tagged. In some cases supposedly tagged prisoners were in fact dead. Serco had to repay £68.5m to the government for its overcharging on the contract that year.  

In 2019, a fine of £19.2m was imposed on Serco following delayed legal action for fraud and false accounting on this Ministry of Justice tagging contract.

Serco said: “The events of 2013 are more than a decade ago and the Serco of today bears no resemblance to the Serco of then, including an entirely new leadership team. We uphold the highest standards of integrity in everything we do.”

Follow Solomon Hughes at x.com/SolHughesWriter.