As the recent family separation policy demonstrates, President Donald Trump wears his zeal for immigration enforcement on his sleeve. Some of his high-level appointees wear it on their savings accounts: A handful of senior officials placed in law enforcement roles by Trump previously drew their paychecks from companies that contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The officials serve in a number of roles in federal law enforcement. Take, for instance, the top federal prosecutor in Indiana, U.S. Attorney Thomas L. Kirsch II, who was sworn in last year to serve in the Justice Department. He previously provided legal services to GEO Group, the sprawling private prison corporation that contracts with ICE to detain immigrants.

At least one official went from working with ICE contractors to working directly as a federal employee. Thomas Blank, the chief of staff at ICE, previously worked as a lobbyist at a firm called Wexler & Walker, where he specialized in helping companies secure security-related contracts before the government. His role there included working for the company now known as Axon, formerly called Taser, which contracts with ICE to supply the once-eponymous stun guns. At Wexler & Walker, Blank worked for several years with Chad Wolf, who now works at the Department of Homeland Security, which operates ICE, as the chief of staff to Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. Wolf, for his part, played a role similar to Blank’s, providing lobbying services for a variety of ICE contractors, including Harris Corp., a technology firm that provides surveillance equipment, as well as Axon.

Asked to comment on the former lobbyists’ roles at DHS, a spokesperson from the department said, in an email, “Pursuant to the Ethics Pledge restrictions on incoming lobbyists, as well as the Standards of Conduct for Employees of the Executive Branch, no DHS employee has any conflicts of interest. All of them serve, and will continue to serve, DHS and the American people with honor and integrity.”(None of the other government agencies nor the private businesses the officials worked for responded to requests for comment.) The Department of Homeland Security is staffed by others who were on the contractor dole. Lora Ries, an adviser to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services who has called for increased “interior enforcement” against undocumented immigrants, previously worked for several DHS contractors as a lobbyist. Ries, in her most recent position before joining the Trump administration, worked as an industry strategist for CSRA, a technology firm that provides the controversial “GangNet” database solution used by ICE to target suspected gang members. There are more former ICE contractors at the Justice Department, too. Daniel Clayton Mosteller, the U.S. marshal for South Dakota, appointed last October by Trump, previously worked for Forfeiture Support Associates, a private firm that contracts with ICE and other federal agencies to process assets seized by the government.

Private businesses have long taken advantage of the steady growth of security policies aimed at tracking, detaining, and deporting people from the country. They saw a windfall in the Trump era.