Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Thursday, January 29th. Today on Forbes, the men making

millions selling pepper spray to ice. In the moments before Border Patrol officers shot and

killed ICU nurse Alex Pretty in Minneapolis last week, they pepper sprayed him in the face as he tried to protect

a fellow protester. Shocking photos have circulated showing how ice agents have aggressively used the

substance, which is considered a non-lethal chemical weapon, to control crowds protesting the Trump

administration's increasingly violent immigration crackdown.

Both pepper spray and tear gas can incapacitate people by causing searing, burning pain and making it difficult to breathe. According to government contracting records,

the government largely buys them from a small group of little-known companies.

Over the last year, these companies have signed deals for chemical weapons and equipment with ice, and their largest ever contract with CBP, Border Patrol's parent agency.

Quantico Tactical, a weapons and armor distributor based in Aberdeen, North Carolina,

is by far the biggest supplier of chemical weapons to ICE and CBP during Trump's second term, per contracting

records. Founded by North Carolina-based David Hensley, a former Marine Corps major,

it has sold $4.7 million of tear gas and pepper spray to the agencies since

January 2025. Nearly triple its $1.7 million in sales the previous year. It has also provided

more traditional munitions to ice. Its biggest contract with the agency was for $10 million,

in quote, firearms and magazines,

in September last year.

As a distributor, Quantico doesn't manufacture any equipment it sells.

It resells others' products.

Though the public contracts don't provide the name of the manufacturer,

Quantico is a major reseller of

equipment from Safari Land, one of the best-known providers of chemical non-lethal weapons to federal

...