ICE is quietly floating a plan that sounds ripped from a dystopian novel, hiring private bounty hunters to track down undocumented immigrants for cash. The proposal, revealed in a procurement document obtained by The Intercept, outlines a potential contract that would hand over massive troves of personal data to outside firms and pay them “monetary bonuses” based on how many people they locate.
According to the report, ICE’s vision is sprawling and deeply ambitious. Contractors would be fed “bundles” of roughly 10,000 immigrant profiles at a time, with follow-up assignments potentially scaling up to one million. The model rewards efficiency and accuracy, turning immigration enforcement into a numbers game where every name is a potential payday.
The document describes a kind of high-tech bounty system powered by surveillance and digital tracking. Contractors would be required to verify home addresses by conducting discreet, on-the-ground checks and snapping “time-stamped photographs” of the locations. If the targets weren’t at home, agents would pivot to confirming workplaces or other hangouts. The solicitation even encourages using digital tools and skip-tracing databases to supplement fieldwork, effectively blending old-school detective work with modern data mining.
This isn’t coming out of nowhere, ICE has been expanding its surveillance footprint for years, contracting with private data brokers and analytics firms to monitor immigrants on a mass scale. Earlier this year, the agency issued another request for information seeking the capacity to track up to a million individuals in real time, using sophisticated data aggregation systems that merge public records, online activity, and predictive analysis.
Private contractors are already licking their chops. The GEO Group, the parent company of ICE’s longtime monitoring partner BI Inc., told investors it expects to ramp up operations dramatically. Executives said they’re preparing to handle “hundreds of thousands or millions” of migrants under new enforcement programs, an expansion that could mean hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenue.
Civil rights advocates say the move is not just alarming, but dangerous. Paying contractors per head located, they warn, could create incentives for overreach and abuse, particularly when combined with the agency’s vast surveillance powers. “When you put bounties on people’s heads, mistakes aren’t just possible, they’re inevitable,” one immigration attorney told reporters. Others fear it will drive entire immigrant communities deeper underground, too afraid to access schools, hospitals, or legal services.
Supporters argue the plan could help clear backlogs and locate individuals who have skipped court hearings or violated immigration orders. But critics see something darker, a creeping privatization of law enforcement that blurs the line between public accountability and corporate profit.
ICE hasn’t released details or confirmed whether the plan is moving forward, and the agency didn’t respond to requests for comment. Still, the document’s language makes its intentions clear. With digital surveillance expanding and the promise of bonuses on the table, immigration enforcement may soon look less like law and order, and more like a profit-driven manhunt.
