McKinsey ends work with under-fire ICE
MCKINSEY & Co, the prominent management consultancy, has stopped working for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) after the disclosure last month that the firm had done more than $20 million (R268m) in consulting work for the agency. The revelation prompted questions from employees at the firm.
McKinsey’s decision was conveyed in a note from the firm’s new managing partner, Kevin Sneader, to former employees. He said the contract, which was not widely known within the company until The New York Times reported it in June, had “rightly raised” concerns.
While stating that McKinsey’s work for the agency did not involve carrying out immigration policies, Sneader wrote that the firm “will not, under any circumstances, engage in any work, anywhere in the world, that advances or assists policies that are odds with our values”.
Complaints about the contract come at a time when McKinsey is under fire in South Africa for its role in a vast government corruption scandal that led to the resignation of former president Jacob Zuma.
The resulting crisis at McKinsey, the most serious in its 92-year history, was the focus of The Times article.
On Monday, in a speech to a business school in Johannesburg, Sneader apologised to the nation for McKinsey’s handling of the episode.
“We came across as arrogant or unaccountable,” he said. “To be brutally honest, we were too distant to understand the growing anger in South Africa.”
McKinsey’s decision to end work with ICE comes amid widespread anger, across the political spectrum, over the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy on illegal immigration that led to the separation of children from their parents – a practice that was ended in June.
While Sneader acknowledged the concerns about McKinsey’s contract, a spokesperson said the firm had already finished the job.
However, when asked about the contract before the story was published, McKinsey did not say that the work was ending. What’s more, federal records show that the contract was modified three days after The Times story appeared.
The disclosure that McKinsey was working with ICE “caused a lot of discussions and alumni reactions”, one former partner said. It “caused a bit of drama”.
While several government agencies are involved in carrying out Trump’s immigration policies, ICE, which oversees detention centres across the country, has come under the most criticism. At least three other consulting companies – Deloitte Consulting, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Booz Allen Hamilton – have also advised ICE, according to federal contracting records.
James Fisher, a spokesperson for Booz Allen, said the company’s work with ICE involved “information systems, data integration and analytics”, and did not involve “the separation of children from adults”. Deloitte declined to comment, and PricewaterhouseCoopers did not respond.
McKinsey’s contract is for “management consulting services” for the agency’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division, though neither McKinsey nor ICE gave details on what that meant.
“Our support, which has ended, has never been focused on developing, advising or implementing immigration policies, including the child-separation policy,” Sneader said in the note to former employees. McKinsey’s current contract with ICE began during the Obama administration. Most of the work was done after Trump took office.
McKinsey’s involvement in the South African corruption scandal stemmed from its consulting contract with Eskom.
McKinsey came under fire because of the size of the payout and because its partner was linked to a business associate of the Gupta brothers, who have been accused of using their relationship with Zuma’s family to siphon money from the state.
McKinsey has paid back the R1 billion in fees it took for its work with Eskom.
In Johannesburg on Monday, Sneader said the contract went against McKinsey’s policy of putting the client’s interests ahead of its own.
“Our commercial approach led to a fee that was too large,” he said. “The fee was weighted towards recovering our investment, rather than being in line with Eskom’s situation. In that context, the fee was too large.”– New York Times News Service