U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is in Greater Cincinnati communities. It is in area jails. Most recently, the agency drew the attention of local schools.
ICE is a player in corporate Cincinnati, too.
Since 2020, 10 companies with a local presence won or completed ICE contracts worth more than $16.7 million, government data shows. Providing a range of products and services, the Greater Cincinnati firms are part of a growing network supporting a still-expanding ICE.
The largest local contractor, called Government Acquisitions Inc., has collected millions to provide technology services to ICE. The 37-year-old Mount Auburn firm grabbed nearly 80% of all local contracts for the period analyzed, with about $13.2 million in ICE work.
Other firms have provided architectural and engineering services, document shredding, firearms storage and vehicle modification.
The Enquirer analyzed the data as debate over ICE intensifies in the region and across the country. Recent polls show a majority support abolishing the agency – fueled by the federal government’s 76-day shutdown of Homeland Security agencies and congressional Democrats’ demands to rein in ICE after the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good.
While several federal agencies have drawn scrutiny since the start of the second Trump administration, ICE has remained a flash point, with Trump supporters defending increased efforts to enforce immigration law and detractors assailing the administration for inhumane immigration policies.
USAspending.gov tracks contracts with U.S. government
The Enquirer first learned about one of Greater Cincinnati’s 10 ICE contractors back in February, after progressive news outlet The Intercept reported ICE hired Gravitas Professional Services to locate immigrants.
It found the others on USAspending.gov, a leading source of information about government contracts of all types.
The data showed 10 firms with addresses in Hamilton, Butler, Warren or Clermont counties in Ohio with ICE contracts awarded or still in effect since 2020. It turned up no companies with addresses in the Northern Kentucky counties of Boone, Kenton or Campbell with ICE contracts during that same time period.
Of the Greater Cincinnati ICE contractors, one granted The Enquirer a brief phone interview, one provided a statement via email and one declined to comment. The balance did not respond to multiple calls and emails.
Demand for ICE contractors on the rise
Contractors have been in great demand since Donald Trump started his second term as president in January 2025, promising to ramp up enforcement of immigration laws. He’s kept that promise, according to White House press releases, by increasing funding for ICE, along with ICE staff and the number of immigrant detainees and sites to hold them.
“We’re seeing these surges all over the country,” said Nancy Hiemstra, who researches immigration as an associate professor at Stony Brook University in Long Island, New York.
Contractors are “lured into supporting the logic” of supporting an expanding ICE, Hiemstra said. “More and more companies are getting into this web of economic dependence on immigration enforcement.”
A January report from the American Immigration Council said increased funding for ICE – the agency won billions of new dollars in the Trump administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, enacted last July – has paved the way for dramatic growth in detentions.
“American communities are now seeing a level of immigration enforcement utterly unprecedented in modern history,” the anti-Trump council concluded.
In Greater Cincinnati, some of the 10 contractors started new ICE work before the start of the second Trump administration, some after.
Here’s a look at the 10, from largest to smallest contract, and the nature of their ICE business.
No. 1: Government Acquisitions with $13.2M in work
A former Procter & Gamble staffer named Dennis Obial created Government Acquisitions Inc. in 1989. The firm has had three addresses since then, now operating from an unnamed office building on Reading Road, just north of Eden Park Drive, in Mount Auburn.
A driveway sign announces the building as private property. The front door includes a “no trespassing” notice. A small sign in the lobby is the only acknowledgement that Government Acquisitions is located on the third floor.
Online, the firm pictures eight executives on its leadership page and boasts of “over 30 years of expertise” with “enterprise solutions in cybersecurity, infrastructure, analytics, automation and AI.”
On the “contracts” tab of its website, the company lists the U.S. Navy and U.S. Army and the Departments of State, Commerce, Agriculture and Homeland Security among its clients. “Government Acquisitions Inc. has one of the most diversified contract portfolios in our industry,” the site says.
From 2020-25, Government Acquisitions had $13.2 million in ICE contracts. While that’s small compared to total U.S. government spending with Cincinnati firms – which USAspending.gov put at more than $24 billion for the years analyzed – it is the most of the 10 Greater Cincinnati firms working for ICE.
Some Government Acquisitions contracts began years ago, with two as old as 2010, but continued into 2020 or beyond, according to USAspending.gov. All related to some kind of technology service:
The ICE work appears to be a small portion of Government Acquisitions’ total revenue. Overall, it had about $1.6 billion worth of work for the U.S. government under about 8,000 contracts in place 2020-25, the tracking site showed.
Government Acquisitions did not return calls and emails to top executives.
No. 2: KZF Design with $2.5M in projects
KZF Design, now 70 years old, is considered a “premier design firm” in the Midwest, its website says.
With a staff of 90 operating from 700 Broadway St. in Downtown Cincinnati, the company counts governments at all levels, along with private entities, as customers. Locally, recent projects include Montgomery Quarter, Free Store Food Bank and a former Shillito’s property.
Asked about its two recent contracts with the Department of Homeland Security for ICE, President and CEO Doug Marsh noted that KZF has provided architectural and engineering services to many DHS units. The firm’s aim, Marsh said via email, is helping clients “design a better future through spaces that drive culture, foster connections and respond to evolving community needs.”
According to USAspending.gov, KZF’s work for ICE between 2020-25 brought it:
Like Government Acquisitions, KZF’s jobs for ICE are just part of its work for the U.S. government. Overall, the firm had about $79 million in federal contracts, 2020-25.
No. 3: Gravitas Professional Services
As The Enquirer earlier reported, Gravitas Professional Services (operating as Gravitas Investigations) won an ICE contract worth $427,500, effective Dec. 16, 2025, to find about 10,000 undocumented immigrants in unspecified locations.
The work is called “skip tracing” and involves locating people who are intentionally avoiding being found.
Gravitas founder and President Adam Visnic did not return messages then or now. Also as reported earlier, Gravitas does not occupy the addresses (one in Downtown and one in Kings Mill) it lists on its website.
No. 4: O’Gara-Hess Eisenhardt Armoring
The company formerly known as O’Gara-Hess Eisenhardt Armoring had a single contract with ICE between 2020 and 2025 – a $237,402 agreement for what was described only as “vehicle modifications.”
Created in 1876 to make coaches carried by horses, the company pivoted to presidential limousines in the 1940s and armored limousines after that. Operating as O’Gara Training and Services since 2006, the company now provides training for high-risk situations from Montross, Virginia.
Patriot Armor now owns and operates a glass fabricating plant in Fairfield, after buying some of O’Gara assets there in 2022.
Messages left for O’Gara and Patriot executives were not returned.
One comment from No. 5, none from the balance
Ogis Communications Group, which also does business as OCG Telecom, had a single contract for $121,000 to provide ICE with Imazing Enterprise software licenses. The software is used to manage Apple operating systems for iPads and iPhones.
In a phone call, Osford Ogis called his Springdale company a “smaller outfit” and said the ICE contract is “an average order” by size.
As to how the work he does relates to ICE operations, Ogis said: “I have no visibility into that.”
Of the remainder of Greater Cincinnati’s 2020-25 ICE contractors, Stop Stick said, “We do not discuss our contracts.” The rest did not respond for requests for comment:
Enquirer reporter David Ferrara contributed research for this story.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Greater Cincinnati firms profit from ICE contracts
Reporting by Patricia Gallagher Newberry, Cincinnati Enquirer / Cincinnati Enquirer
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