For a long time people said this couldn’t happen. That America would never turn its own soil into a bounty field. Now it’s being drafted in contracts. The government calls it “information gathering.” But everyone knows what this really is.
Kristi Noem’s Department of Homeland Security is considering private contractors to help ICE track immigrants. The Intercept described them bluntly.
“The Department of Homeland Security, led by Kristi Noem, is considering whether to hire private contractors to track down immigrants, a new report reveals.
The Intercept described these contractors as “private bounty hunters” when it published a DHS document detailing the proposal on Saturday. The “Request for Information” document, which is intended for prospective vendors, states that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has “an immediate need for Skip Tracing and Process Serving Services,” which would use “Government furnished case data,” according to the outlet.
Skip-tracing involves “gathering, analyzing, and verifying information to locate individuals who have disappeared, whether intentionally or unintentionally,” according to Thomson Reuters. The agency says contractors could be given dockets of 10,000 immigrants at a time, with additional assignments given in “increments of 10,000 up to 1,000,000,” according to The Intercept. ICE is also “exploring an incentive based pricing structure,” and could even provide “monetary bonuses” for performance, according to the obtained document. One way an ICE says contractors might get a cash bonus, according to The Intercept, is by identifying a person’s correct address on the first try”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/kristi-noem-mulls-using-private-032805050.html
A government handing out one million case files to private hands isn’t law enforcement anymore. It’s industrialized surveillance. Once profit meets identification, accuracy becomes optional. The word “bonus” tells you what this really rewards — speed, not truth.
And the other arm of ICE is already preparing the technology to make it bigger.
“ICE seeks tech to continuously monitor up to 1,000,000 “people or entities of interest.” This expands the surveillance pool and normalizes bulk tracking. Combine that with privatized “skip tracing,” and you get a vast, semi-outsourced dragnet where private firms handle government-scale data and targeting. “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is looking to hire a company to help it mine through data sources including social media, international trade data, blockchain information, property records, and the dark web — the latest example of the agency looking to beef up the tools and platforms it uses in its enforcement operations.”
https://fedscoop.com/ice-seeks-proprietary-data-and-tech-to-monitor-up-to-a-million-people/
They are building an ecosystem of constant watching. The phrase “entities of interest” could mean anyone. Social media, blockchain, trade, property, the dark web — there’s no wall left between public and private life when those tools merge.
Even Congress is warning that ICE and CBP already detain U.S. citizens by mistake.
“We write regarding the disturbing and increasingly frequent reports of unconstitutional detentions of U.S. citizens by agents of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), often using disproportionate force. Reports of excessive, shocking behavior by CBP and ICE agents directed at U.S. citizens have been rampant under the current Administration.1
As the Ranking Members of the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI) and the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform (House Oversight), we are conducting a bicameral inquiry into the increasing detention of U.S. citizens by federal immigration agents. We write to request information and records regarding your Department’s detention of U.S. citizens from the start of President Trump’s term.”
If citizens are already being held without cause, what happens when bounty-style contractors start feeding addresses into the system for money? The odds of wrongful arrests skyrocket. The lawsuits will come, but the damage — the fear, the humiliation — will already be done.
And this is the same department that cannot even guard its own walls.
“U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on Friday that there had been an IT breach at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the American disaster response agency that has been buffeted by deep cuts and is slated for elimination.
Noem’s statement gave few specifics about the nature of the breach except to blame FEMA’s staff, two dozen of whom she said she had fired.”
If DHS can’t protect FEMA’s data, how will it protect one million immigrant case files shared with private contractors? Each breach could spill personal addresses, names, and birth records into the wild. In an age of political anger, that’s more than negligence — it’s danger.
And the justification keeps coming from the top.
“Trump Defends ICE Raids in CBS Interview, Says ‘They Haven’t Gone Far Enough’.
“We have to start off with a policy, and the policy has to be that ‘you came into the country illegally, you’re going to go out.”
President Donald Trump used his first 60 Minutes interview in five years to defend his administration’s aggressive Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations, declaring that “they haven’t gone far enough.” The interview, which aired Sunday on CBS News, marked Trump’s first sit-down with the network since suing and later settling with CBS parent company Paramount over a 2024 segment involving then–Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris.
“I think they haven’t gone far enough because we’ve been held back by the judges, by the liberal judges that were put in by Biden and by Obama,” Trump told 60 Minutes anchor Norah O’Donnell. He added that he was “OK with the tactics being used by ICE” because “you have to get the people out.”
This is the world these plans are being built in. Leaders praising raids. Contracts that pay by the head. Computer systems leaking data. And an agency that already arrests citizens by mistake.
People can agree that immigration laws should be enforced. The country has the right to send home those who came here illegally. But that can’t mean anyone can be tracked, watched, or misidentified without consequence. There have to be real safeguards for privacy, for accuracy, for the people who did nothing wrong.