New ICE Plan Would Incentivize Private Bounty Hunters to Locate Immigrants for 'Monetary Bonuses': Report

A newly published ICE procurement document shows the agency is soliciting information from private contractors to locate immigrants across the United States and is exploring "monetary bonuses" tied to performance, The Intercept reported.

The solicitation would provide contractors with batches of case data—starting at 10,000 names at a time and potentially scaling "up to 1,000,000"—and reward rapid or accurate results, the document says.

The request for information, dated Oct. 31 and reviewed by The Intercept, asks vendors to perform "Skip Tracing and Process Serving Services" using government-supplied case data, commercial data verification and "physical observation services" to verify addresses, investigate alternatives and deliver documents.

The procurement explicitly allows use of off-the-shelf surveillance technology and calls for "time-stamped photographs of the location." The document states the vendor "should prioritize the alien's residence," but may verify place of employment if needed. ICE did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The solicitation also describes an "incentive based pricing structure," suggesting bonuses for metrics such as correctly identifying an address on the first try or locating 90 percent of targets within a set timeframe. It recommends "multiple verification sources" and permits automated, real-time skip-tracing tools that can ingest mobile-phone and social-media data.

The Intercept notes the procurement resembles a scheme floated earlier this year by private contractors led by former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince. In February, Politico reported that Prince and partners pitched a plan that included a "bounty program which provides a cash reward for each illegal alien held by a state or local law enforcement officer" and a large-scale "Skip Tracing Team."

Politico quoted Steve Bannon saying at the time that "people want this stood up quickly," reflecting private-sector momentum behind rapid deportation proposals.

The procurement plan reported by The Intercept comes as immigration authorities expand their use of digital monitoring tools. According to federal records reviewed by The Lever on October 23, ICE recently signed a $5.7 million, five-year contract with Carahsoft Technology to provide licenses for Zignal Labs, an AI-driven social-media monitoring platform previously used by the Pentagon and Israeli military.

Zignal Labs advertises the ability to analyze more than 8 billion posts per day to generate "curated detection feeds" for investigators. The licenses will go to Homeland Security Investigations to support "real-time data analysis for criminal investigations," according to the disclosure.