This Tuckahoe home won a $1.26 billion contract for an ICE detention center. The owner isn't talking.
On July 18, the Acquisition Logistics Company received a contract worth a reported $1.26 billion from the federal government for the construction and operation of an immigrant detention center in El Paso County, Texas at the Fort Bliss Army base.
That contract alone would make the Acquisition Logistics Company one of Richmond’s largest businesses, but it’s not a household name. It doesn’t even have an office: its listed headquarters is a residential house located in Henrico’s Tuckahoe neighborhood.
The Acquisition Logistics Company was founded in 2008 by President and CEO Kenneth Wagner, a veteran and systems engineer.
According to the company’s website, Wagner “has successfully provided senior leadership to logistics, systems engineering, and program management initiatives in the Federal Government.”
Information on the LLC is sparse. The company’s website is dated and largely accessible only via login. The LLC is listed as having 39 employees, according to zoominfo. There are no office spaces or warehouses listed.
Wagner and the COO of his company, Darrin Armentrout, did not respond to requests to interview over email. When called, Wagner answered, then immediately hung up.
The Richmonder is powered by your donations. For just $9.99 a month, you can join the 1,000+ donors who are keeping quality local journalism alive in Richmond.
The detention center project
The Acquisition Logistics Company was one of 13 companies to submit bids for the project online. The project’s estimated completion date is September 2027. The project has made national news for its size and scope.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the contract was previously awarded to a different company, then rescinded. The prior company was not listed.
According to the El Paso Times, the project is set to be the largest of its kind in the United States, with an expected capacity of 5,000 beds. The project comes just weeks after a migrant detention facility opened in the Florida Everglades at the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport. The project has a capacity of 3,000 with a push to increase the number of beds to 5,000 in the coming months. The cost to maintain it is estimated at $450 million.
In a report published earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement describes the center as a “staging location” for ICE, with the intention “to house and supervise aliens pending their removal from the United States.”
The Acquisition Logistics Company has received $48.2 million in federal contract and grant funding since its founding, according to GovTribe. The majority of its funding has come from DOD contracts. This will be the company’s largest federal contract, and about 442 times larger than the size of its last published contract.
Contact reporting intern Juliana Vandermark at jvandermark@richmonder.org.
