ICE Plans Cash Rewards for Private Bounty Hunters to Locate and Track Immigrants

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is considering hiring private bounty hunters to locate immigrants across the country, according to a procurement document reviewed by The Intercept. Under the plan, bounty hunters may receive “monetary bonuses” depending on how successfully they track down their targets — and how many immigrants they then report to ICE.

According to the document, which solicits information from interested contractors for a potentially forthcoming contract opportunity, companies hired by ICE will be given bundles of information on 10,000 immigrants at a time to locate, with further assignments provided in “increments of 10,000 up to 1,000,000.”

The solicitation says ICE is “exploring an incentive based pricing structure” to encourage quick results, with “monetary bonuses” paid out based on performance. For example, ICE says contractors might get paid a bonus for identifying a person’s correct address on the first try or finding 90 percent of its targets within a set timeframe. (ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

The document closely resembles a plan reportedly circulated by a group of military contractors, including former Blackwater CEO and Trump ally Erik Prince.

In February, Politico reported that Prince and other were pushing for the formation of a private efforts to locate immigrants and a “bounty program which provides a cash reward for each illegal alien held by a state or local law enforcement officer,” according pitch materials obtained by the outlet.

The proposal called for “skip-tracing,” a method of using available information to locate people — something ICE is already handing out multimillion-dollar contracts for, according to a recent report in The Lever.

Soon, according to the newly published procurement document, private sector ICE contractors will surveil and confirm the home or work addresses of tens of thousands of immigrants in the U.S. and then report their locations back to the government.

“DHS ICE has an immediate need for Skip Tracing and Process Serving Services using Government furnished case data with identifiable information, commercial data verification, and physical observation services, to verify alien address information, investigate alternative alien address information, confirm the new location of aliens, and deliver materials/documents to aliens as appropriate,” according to the October 31 request for information.

Data provided by ICE will include “case data” provided by the government, location data, social media information, as well as “photos and documents” showing where a person lives or works. With this in hand, contractors will surveil their target to confirm the accuracy of their home address, including “time-stamped photographs of the location,” before reporting back to ICE.

“The vendor should prioritize the alien’s residence,” the document notes, “but failing that will attempt to verify place of employment.”

The plan entails not just on-the-ground monitoring, but the use of digital surveillance. ICE says contractors can use off-the-shelf surveillance technology to confirm immigrants’ addresses, including “Enhanced location research, which entails automated and manual real-time skip tracing.”

Surveillance tools that ingest and track mobile phone location data are widely available on the private market, many of them already used by ICE.

“Multiple verification sources are recommended to achieve a high confidence level,” the document says, encouraging potential vendors to use “all technology systems available.” 

The new procurement document notes that “the Government is contemplating awarding contracts to multiple vendors” due to the large number of immigrants whose whereabouts it seeks to confirm.