{"id":941364,"date":"2026-07-17T15:50:25","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T15:50:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/941364\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T15:50:25","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T15:50:25","slug":"alderman-critical-of-meter-bidder-ice-tie-has-own-financial-link-to-ice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/941364\/","title":{"rendered":"Alderman critical of meter bidder ICE tie has own financial link to ICE"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ald. Bill Conway has joined the chorus of Chicago aldermen<\/a> criticizing the company trying to buy the city\u2019s parking meter system for owning a company tied to President Donald Trump\u2019s deportation machine.<\/p>\n

But the downtown alderman has his own financial stake in the contractor that runs U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement\u2019s biggest detention camp, records show.<\/p>\n

Conway has a multimillion-dollar stake in GrizzlyRock Capital LLC, a private investment firm run by a friend that has $7.5 million invested in Amentum Holdings, a massive government contractor that now runs Camp East Montana in El Paso, Texas, according to a Tribune analysis.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s similar to the financial tie the moderate alderman has already criticized \u2014 and a connection that highlights the far-reaching economic web at many of the largest financial institutions in the world that undergirds Trump\u2019s deportation efforts.<\/p>\n

In a statement to the Tribune, a Conway spokesperson said the 34th Ward alderman had been unaware of the GrizzlyRock investment in Amentum and has no role in monitoring the around 50 companies in which GrizzlyRock invests. GrizzyRock owns 0.12% of the government contractor, the statement said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter learning of the investment, Ald. Conway recommended that GrizzlyRock sell their shares because they should not be invested in a company helping carry out the Trump administration\u2019s reprehensible immigration actions. GrizzlyRock makes their decisions independently,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAld. Conway remains opposed to the parking meter deal. As he has said, Stonepeak\u2019s business relationship with ICE is one of several factors he considered in evaluating the proposal for taxpayers,\u201d it continued.<\/p>\n

Kyle Mowery, GrizzlyRock\u2019s manager, is a close political ally of Conway\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Mowery has contributed $52,000 to Conway\u2019s campaigns across 10 expenditures since 2019, campaign finance records show. He has not contributed to any other politicians in state and local elections.<\/p>\n

Mowery told the Tribune in a statement that minority investors do not direct or influence his firm\u2019s decisions.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have no role in Amentum\u2019s operations or business strategy,\u201d he wrote. \u201cAmentum had not disclosed any contract with DHS at the time we made our investment. In light of this new contract, GrizzlyRock is reassessing the investment and taking Mr. Conway\u2019s concerns under advisement.\u201d<\/p>\n

GrizzlyRock did not own Amentum shares before Trump\u2019s election, according to SEC filings. The company purchased about $3 million in shares in the company in the first quarter of 2025, around the time Trump took office, and has since nearly doubled the number of shares it owns.<\/p>\n

Conway has been a vocal critic of Stonepeak Partners, the private equity firm attempting to purchase Chicago\u2019s parking meter system, citing its own ties to Trump\u2019s deportation efforts.<\/p>\n

Stonepeak owns Omni Air International, a charter airline that conducts long-haul deportation flights for the federal government. The airline\u2019s flights have grown longer and crueler in recent years, with deportees sometimes shackled for days, according to an investigation by Mother Jones.<\/p>\n

In a June tweet, Conway shared a screenshot of that Mother Jones article and said Stonepeak \u201chelped ramp up inhumane ICE deportation flights.\u201d Within the context of the ongoing debate, the comment suggested the financial tie could make the company unfit to own the parking meter system.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to investigate and can\u2019t have ICE infiltrating our meters or accessing related data,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

In making the jab, Conway became one of many aldermen \u2014 most vocally Latino and progressive City Council members \u2014 who have flagged the investment firm\u2019s ICE ties.<\/p>\n

Stonepeak senior managing director James Wyper told aldermen that ICE\u2019s ongoing actions \u201ccould not be more abhorrent\u201d during a City Council hearing on the sale last month.<\/p>\n

The company\u2019s predominant business was transporting military families into non-combat zones, but it has worked with the Department of Homeland Security for two decades, he said. There is an \u201cactive sale, ongoing, of the business\u201d and Stonepeak has reduced the hours Omni dedicates to DHS, he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cI could not be more apoplectic,\u201d he said. \u201cI hate this. This is not the business we bought.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"LargeLarge tents meant to house thousands of immigrants detained at Camp East Montana, an ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations detention facility at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, Jan. 15, 2026. (Paul Ratje\/The New York Times)<\/p>\n

The ICE criticism is only one part of the ongoing debate surrounding the controversial proposed sale of the privatized parking meter system from its Morgan Stanley-controlled current ownership to Stonepeak.<\/p>\n

Conway has been a leader among aldermen in urging the City Council to not be a rubber stamp in the process.<\/p>\n

He has called for caution and insisted aldermen get significant legal and financial support, part of an effort to see if the city might be able to extract a better deal from the potential new owners in the $2.53 billion sale. He has also joined criticism of Mayor Brandon Johnson\u2019s administration\u2019s alleged lack of transparency surrounding the deal.<\/p>\n

But the alderman has also repeated his criticism of the firm\u2019s complex connection to ICE, even after Wyper\u2019s June comments.<\/p>\n

As an expected Finance Committee vote on the sale was canceled Monday, Conway again highlighted the financial link.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a situation where we have seen ICE in our, you know, immigration enforcement, in our schools, in our community centers, and now we have a situation where the buyer of the parking meters is a company that owns another company that has been doing harsh dehumanizing ICE deportation,\u201d he said, according to ABC7 Chicago.<\/p>\n

While the alderman\u2019s financial ties are in part different because Stonepeak controls Omni Air while GrizzlyRock does not control Amentum, the alderman does have his own multi-level financial link to the mechanics of Trump\u2019s growing deportation apparatus.<\/p>\n

A financial disclosure form Conway filed to run for office in 2022 listed him as a passive part-owner of GrizzlyRock, a Chicago-headquartered private investment firm with around $130 million in assets.<\/p>\n

Conway most recently owned between 5% and 10% of the company, according to records filed by the firm with the SEC in March. He does not share control over the firm\u2019s investments, records showed.<\/p>\n

GrizzlyRock owns over $7.5 million in shares of Amentum Holdings, according to SEC filings.<\/p>\n

In March, Trump\u2019s administration awarded the goliath Virginia-based government contractor a $453 million contract to run Camp East Montana for six months. Amentum had previously been a subcontractor at the massive U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in El Paso.<\/p>\n

Although Amentum was not the camp\u2019s primary contractor at the time an Associated Press investigation was published in March, detainees reported being underfed and in fear of brutal guards. They also reported living under leaking roofs, getting inadequate medical attention and only seeing the sun once or twice a week at the facility, the report based on 911 calls by detainees said at the time.<\/p>\n

Amentum officials did not immediately respond to questions about their management of the camp.<\/p>\n

The reporting was reinforced Wednesday by an 84-page report published by the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch under the title, \u201cYou\u2019re only getting out deported or dead.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople detained at Camp East Montana endured conditions of confinement that amounted to enforced disappearance, cruel, degrading and inhuman treatment, excessive use of force including one extrajudicial killing, life-threatening medical neglect, barriers to legal representation, and coercive third-country removals,\u201d the report said. \u201cTogether, these abuses violate fundamental protections under US and international human rights law.\u201d<\/p>\n

The report called on the federal government to investigate the contractors who built and operate the camp.<\/p>\n

The Camp East Montana contract and GrizzlyRock\u2019s investment are only part of Amentum, one of the largest government services contractors. The company, which operates a wide array of programs, has a market cap of $5 billion.<\/p>\n

But Omni Air similarly represents only a slice of Stonepeak\u2019s around $90 billion holdings. Stonepeak purchased Air Transport Services Group, a group that owns several airlines, including Omni, at a valuation of $3.1 billion in November 2024.<\/p>\n

Some of Amentum\u2019s largest shareholders include behemoth investment firms that millions of Americans invest their money in, such as Invesco, BlackRock and Vanguard Group, according to recent filings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ald. Bill Conway has joined the chorus of Chicago aldermen criticizing the company trying to buy the city\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":941365,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5124],"tags":[376281,379160,960,178377,31126,379159,5386,1818,20523,29615],"class_list":["post-941364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chicago","tag-ald-bill-conway","tag-camp-east-montana","tag-chicago","tag-chicago-parking","tag-el-paso","tag-grizzlyrock-capital-llc","tag-il","tag-illinois","tag-immigration-and-customs-enforcement","tag-stonepeak"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116936117468430735","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=941364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/941364\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/941365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=941364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=941364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=941364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}