A new headquarters for Killeen’s newest air ambulance and detainee flight contractor will bring 35 high-paying jobs, among other things, to the city.
In the course of previous reporting about one of Killeen Regional Airport’s fastest-growing tenants, KDH News obtained a trove of messages between city officials and major-league government contractor CSI Aviation via open records request last week. The emails and text messages largely revolve around a $5.1 million headquarters building the city agreed to construct in May.
The company has been relocating its operations from Albuquerque, New Mexico, for the past couple of years, and now occupies two hangars and office space on the southern end of the airport. Built by the same contractor that recently completed the new general aviation terminal at Skylark Field, the build-to-suit headquarters is estimated to be finished by June of next year.
‘No profit’
Email conversations in February between city aviation director Mike Wilson and New Mexico real estate developer Steve Maestas, a board member of CSI, reveal some disagreement on the lease rate for the 9,000-square-foot headquarters.
The company had initially requested a rent price of between $18,000 and $22,500 per month, but Wilson said that the rent would have to be “close to $35,000 per month” just for the city to break even on the project, citing high cost estimates and the custom design.
“We are making no profit,” Wilson said in a Feb. 14 email. “In fact, by the time we insure the building and consider any maintenance/repairs we may have to do over the years, we may be losing a small amount.”
After voicing concerns that contractor Synergy Commercial Construction was adding unnecessary expenses to the bill — something Wilson refuted by pointing out the contractor’s work on the Skylark terminal — CSI founder and CEO Allen Weh suggested that city and company representatives meet to discuss a lease rate that benefits all parties.
By the time the lease agreement was signed in May, it stated that CSI will be required to pay $23,175 per month for the facility, to be increased by 3% each year.
Classified area
One room stood out in the discussions about the planned building — a SCIF.
Short for Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, a SCIF is a highly secure room used for storing, discussing or electronically processing highly classified government information. The most commonly known example is the White House Situation Room, and each must be certified by an element of the U.S. Intelligence Community. An initial floor plan for the new CSI headquarters in 2024 anticipates the need for one.
CSI advertises Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance capabilities on its website, and a subsidiary, Seeker Aircraft, actually manufactures light aircraft for surveillance purposes. A review of publicly available federal contracts does not show any current government work in that field, but in September discussions around the room mentioned that a team had already been assigned to work in it.
Space for ICE
A memo on estimated space requirements for the new facility suggests that contract teams for both Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Chief Counsel would reside in office spaces within the company’s hangar on the airport tarmac.
In previous reporting by KDH News and other outlets, CSI Aviation has a long history transporting prisoners of the U.S. government by air, and has held contracts with agencies from the Bureau of Prisons to ICE for more than a decade.
CSI recently began using Killeen Regional Airport as a “crew base” for its subcontracted aircraft to fly detainee transport and deportation missions from major ICE Air Operations hubs in Mesa, Arizona, and Alexandria, Louisiana. According to Wilson, the city aviation director, no detainees are traveling in or out of Killeen on the aircraft, which are operated by Eastern Air Express and Key Lime Air.
Revenues from that single DHS contract soared to at least $300 million, bringing its total income from federal contracts to $652 million in Fiscal Year 2025 — more than any other year on record, according to public federal spending data.
The company was seeking to break its 2025 taxpayer funding record earlier this year with a bid to expand into the voluntary “self-deportation” business, but those dreams were dashed when DHS awarded a three-year contract to a different firm, reported Mother Jones and the Project on Government Oversight on Oct. 10. CSI, whose own deportation flight contracts have faced several bid protests in the past, filed its own protest against DHS in August.
Days after KDH News reported in June on the nature of the company’s government work, a text message from an unidentified city employee to retired Marine Maj. Gen. William “Rock” Collins, CSI’s longtime chief operating officer, relayed a request from Killeen City Manager Kent Cagle about the number of airlines the company subcontracts for its detainee flights.
“Our Council and even our State representatives are getting hammered about the article in the local newspaper,” the June 12 message read. “I think he is trying to find something to show that the ICE flights are something that is happening all over the country and includes a lot of different airlines other than just CSI.”
Collins did not respond by text to that message, and no information on the exact number of airlines subcontracted by the company has been released. Wilson did confirm to KDH News in September that Eastern Air Express and Colorado-based Key Lime Air was among them.
KDH News reached out to CSI Aviation CEO Allen Weh about this story Friday morning and received no response. All previous inquiries to the company’s press contact have also gone unanswered.