Crimes of ICE

Fresh task orders worth $57.1 million went out this week to the 14 private firms U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement pays to find immigrants, with individual payments running roughly three times higher than what each company collected on its first assignment, according to contract records reviewed by the investigative newsletter Project Salt Box. The Wednesday disbursement builds out a privatized locating operation that industry insiders call skip tracing.

Debt collectors and repossession agents have long used skip tracing to find people who'd rather stay hidden. Under contract to ICE, firms mine government files, buy up consumer data, and scour the open web for clues to where a targeted immigrant might be living or working, then dispatch someone who photographs the home or job site as proof once a location checks out. Scripps News broke the story in January, reporting that the agency had lined up 13 firms on open-ended deals sweetened with speed bonuses. A follow-up analysis from the American Immigration Council published in April put the potential caseload at 50,000 names a month per firm, with the broader campaign aimed at tracking down upward of 1 million people nationwide, and found several contractors leaning on artificial intelligence and facial-recognition software to move faster.

That speed-based payout is why Sharon Bradford Franklin, who once chaired the federal Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, likened the setup to bounty hunting when Scripps News interviewed her. "It's the same kind of incentive situation," she told the outlet.

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The pattern repeats across this week's roster. Constellation Inc.'s task order grew from $767,468.75 the first time around to $2,302,406.25 now. EnProVera, the smallest name on the list, saw its figure rise from $34,552 to $103,656, a jump that lines up almost exactly with the threefold pattern seen industry-wide. Sitting atop the roster is Capgemini Government Solutions, whose $14.5 million order is the biggest of the bunch — even as its own French parent tries to walk away from the business entirely.

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A handful of names on ICE's list are juggling other federal work tied to immigration enforcement. Response AI Solutions is one of three companies — the other two being National Protective Services and SOS International — that separately hold agreements to check on the wellbeing of migrant children who crossed the border without a parent. Response AI goes further still, with a separate deal from the border agency CBP to help chase down fines owed by deportees, putting it, based on public contracting records, in a category of its own: the sole firm currently working every angle of the enforcement pipeline at once. That fine-recovery push, detailed in separate CBP contracting records, targets roughly $423 million owed by more than 66,000 people no longer in the country after being removed; the penalty for ignoring a removal order now runs $998 per day, and contractors must prove they delivered notice by getting deportees to send back a selfie.

Corporate lineage links several contractors to bigger, more familiar names. B.I. Incorporated, one of the 14 skip-tracing firms, belongs to the GEO Group, the private-prison company that operates ICE detention centers and, separately, built the ankle-monitoring and case-management system the agency relies on to keep tabs on immigrants awaiting court dates. Omniplex World Services, also on this week's list, sits inside Constellis, the security firm that grew out of Erik Prince's Blackwater. Field staff working under Omniplex's contract carry no badge or credential marking them as government representatives while staking out a target's residence or workplace, per internal program documents obtained by The Intercept.

Baptiste Group isn't among the 14 skip-tracing companies, but it sits inside the same web of immigration contracts: the firm holds a separate ICE order to check on migrant children, one capped at $291.7 million and running through June 2027. Back in 2021, Tennessee regulators pulled the company's license to run a shelter in Chattanooga after inspectors uncovered evidence of abuse there; two staff members were arrested on charges of sexual battery by an authority figure, and a third was later charged as well. Baptiste Group has since also picked up a slice of the new CBP fine-recovery contracts.