ICE’s Controversial Plan: Private Bounty Hunters for Immigration Enforcement
A troubling development in immigration enforcement has come to light through investigative reporting by The Intercept. According to newly revealed procurement documents, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is exploring a program that would hire private contractors—essentially bounty hunters—to track down and locate immigrants across the country.
How the Program Would Work
The proposed system is both expansive and incentivized. ICE plans to provide contractors with information on 10,000 immigrants at a time, with the potential to scale up to one million individuals. What makes this particularly concerning is the performance-based payment structure: contractors could receive cash bonuses for successfully locating their targets.
These bonuses might be awarded for:
- Identifying a person’s correct address on the first attempt
- Finding 90% of assigned targets within a specific timeframe
- Successfully confirming locations through surveillance
Surveillance Tactics and Technology
The contractors wouldn’t just be searching databases. According to the procurement document, they would employ comprehensive surveillance methods including:
- Physical observation and monitoring of residences and workplaces
- Time-stamped photography of locations
- Digital surveillance using commercially available tracking technology
- Social media monitoring
- Real-time skip-tracing (a technique for locating people using various data sources)
ICE is explicitly encouraging contractors to use “all technology systems available” and multiple verification sources to achieve high confidence in their findings.
Echoes of a Controversial Proposal
This plan bears striking similarities to a proposal reportedly circulated earlier this year by military contractors, including Erik Prince, the former CEO of Blackwater and a Trump ally. That February proposal, as reported by Politico, called for private efforts to locate immigrants and a bounty program offering cash rewards for each undocumented immigrant detained by local law enforcement.
Why This Matters
The privatization of immigration enforcement raises serious questions about accountability, civil liberties, and the potential for abuse. When profit motives are directly tied to identifying and tracking human beings, the risk of errors, overreach, and violations of rights increases substantially.
This program would represent a significant expansion of surveillance capabilities directed at immigrant communities, potentially affecting not just undocumented individuals but anyone who might be surveilled in the process.
Learn More
For the full details of this developing story, including links to the actual procurement documents, read the complete investigation at The Intercept: ICE Plans Cash Rewards for Private Bounty Hunters to Locate and Track Immigrants
As this story develops, it will be crucial to monitor whether this procurement moves forward and what safeguards, if any, might be put in place to protect civil liberties.