ICE Offers Up to $280 Million to ‘Bounty Hunter’ Immigrant Tracking Firms
Immigration and Customs Enforcement is expanding its plans to outsource immigration tracking to private surveillance firms, scrapping a recent $180 million pilot proposal in favor of an uncapped program with multimillion-dollar guarantees, according to new contract records reviewed by WIRED.
Late last month, the Intercept reported that ICE plans to hire bounty hunters and private investigators for street-level verification work. Contractors confirm home and work addresses for people targeted for eviction through — among other techniques — photographing residences, documenting commutes, and workplaces and apartment complexes.
The cases presented the initiative as a significant but limited pilot program. Contractors were guaranteed less than $250 and could earn no more than $90 million each, for a total program of $180 million. That structure noted meaningful scale, but still treated the effort as a controlled experiment, not an integral component of ICE’s removal operation.
Newly released fixes remove this structure. ICE has removed the program fee cap and replaced it with much higher limits for each seller. Contractors may now earn up to $281.25 million individually and are guaranteed an initial work order worth at least $7.5 million. This shift to ICE’s contract base signals that it is no longer an experiment, but an investment, and the agency expects prime contractors to support the manpower, technology and field operations needed to function as a federal enforcement arm.
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, did not immediately respond to WIRED’s request for comment.
The proposed scope was already large. The statement explained that contractors receive recurring monthly batches of 50,000 items collected from 1.5 million people. Private investigators confirm people’s locations not only through commercial data brokers and open source research, but also through in-person visits when necessary. The filings outline a performance-based structure with bonus-like incentives: Firms are paid a fixed price per item, plus bonuses for speed and accuracy, and vendors are expected to offer their own incentive rates.
The agreement also allows the Department of Justice and other DHS components to issue orders under the program.
Previous filings have indicated that private investigators may gain access to ICE’s internal case management systems — databases that contain photos, biographical details, immigration history and other executive records. The amended filings reverse that and state that under no circumstances will contractors be allowed to log into agency systems. Instead, DHS sends contractors export case packages containing a wide range of personal data about each target. The change limits direct exposure to federal systems, but still leaves large amounts of sensitive information available to private surveillance firms that operate outside of public oversight.
