The Democratic Candidate Closely Tied to Crypto and Big Tech
Lobbying disclosures indicate that Boafo regularly lobbied the Department of Homeland Security on Oracle’s behalf, through at least the end of 2025.
In 2021, while Boafo was working as an Oracle lobbyist, the company fought to secure a contract to provide cloud services to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), an arm of the Department of Homeland Security. The company at the time argued that ICE had unfairly excluded it from competing for the contract.
The next year, in December 2022, after successfully getting the Department of Homeland Security to alter its contracting requirements to allow Oracle to bid for the contract, Oracle secured a deal with ICE.
Details in Oracle’s lobbying reports are vague, making it difficult to determine exactly what Boafo was lobbying the Department of Homeland Security for and whether it involved the tech giant’s ICE contracts. But during the period when Oracle was focused on competing for the major ICE cloud contract from 2021 to late 2022, he appeared on several lobbying reports that mention the agency.
Oracle has ongoing business with the Department of Homeland Security and its various law enforcement arms, advertising in a 2026 flyer that it provides “AI-driven insights” to the agency in order to “help protect the nation’s borders.”
Boafo’s work with the company — while also campaigning on additional oversight of ICE — has drawn criticism from his opponents.
“How can voters trust Adrian Boafo to stand up to Trump’s ICE policies when he works for a company tied to ICE operations?” challenger and fellow Maryland state lawmaker Rushern Baker wrote on social media this week.
The Boafo campaign did not respond to a request for comment about Oracle’s work with ICE and Boafo’s lobbying before the Department of Homeland Security.
While Maryland state ethics rules do not outright prohibit lawmakers from working as lobbyists, the law requires disclosures of any conflicts of interest. Boafo had several irregularities in his disclosure forms.
Initially, Boafo did not report holding any Oracle stock, according to his 2023 ethics form. But Boafo later amended the disclosure to include that he owned stock in the company, and in 2025, he reported selling $100,000 worth of his equity.
Boafo’s initial 2024 disclosure indicated that Oracle did not hold any existing contracts with the Maryland state government. But then in November 2025, Boafo changed the disclosure to note that the company did business with the state’s port authority and health benefit exchange.
Boafo has claimed he did not work on state matters for Oracle — only federal issues — and that he has kept a firewall between his public and private work.
