Immigration and Customs Enforcement is expanding plans to outsource immigrant tracking to private surveillance firms, scrapping a recent $180 million pilot proposal in favor of a no-cap program with multimillion-dollar guarantees, according to new contracting records reviewed by WIRED.
Late last month, the Intercept reported that ICE intends to hire bounty hunters and private investigators for street-level verification work. Contractors would confirm home and work addresses for people targeted for removal by—among other techniques—photographing residences, documenting comings and goings, and staking out workplaces and apartment complexes.
Those filings cast the initiative as a substantial but limited pilot program. Contractors were guaranteed as little as $250 and could earn no more than $90 million each, with the overall program capped at $180 million. That structure pointed to meaningful scale but still framed the effort as a controlled trial, not an integral component of ICE’s removal operations.
Newly released amendments dismantle that structure. ICE has removed the program’s spending cap and replaced it with dramatically higher per-vendor limits. Contractors may now earn up to $281.25 million individually and are guaranteed an initial task order worth at least $7.5 million. The shift signals to ICE’s contracting base that this is no longer an experiment, but an investment, and that the agency expects prime-tier contractors to stand up the staffing, technology, and field operations needed to function as a de facto arm of federal enforcement.
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, did not immediately respond to WIRED’s request for comment.
The proposed scope was already large. It described contractors receiving monthly recurring batches of 50,000 cases drawn from a docket of 1.5 million people. Private investigators would confirm individuals’ locations not only through commercial data brokers and open-source research, but via in-person visits when required. The filings outline a performance-based structure with bounty-like incentives: Firms will be paid a fixed price per case, plus bonuses for speed and accuracy, with vendors expected to propose their own incentive rates.
The contract also authorizes the Department of Justice and other DHS components to issue their own orders under the program.
Previous filings hinted that private investigators might receive access to ICE’s internal case-management systems—databases that contain photos, biographical details, immigration histories, and other enforcement notes. The amended filings reverse that, stating that contractors will not be permitted inside agency systems under any circumstance. Instead, DHS will send contractors exported case packets containing a range of personal data on each target. This change limits direct exposure to federal systems, but still places large volumes of sensitive information in the hands of private surveillance firms operating outside public oversight.
The proposal is only the latest effort by the Trump administration to dramatically broaden the role of contractors inside ICE’s enforcement operations. WIRED first reported plans last month to install a contractor-run transportation network across the state of Texas, staffed by armed teams moving detainees around the clock. Earlier this fall, the agency sought a private vendor to staff two 24/7 social media “targeting centers,” where contract analysts would scan platforms like Facebook, TikTok, and X for leads to feed directly into detention operations. And a separate proposal this month called for a privately run national call center, operated almost entirely by an industry partner, to field up to 7,000 enforcement calls per day with only minimal federal staff on site.
Ultimately, the escalation in ICE’s private surveillance commitments reflects a basic reality—that few contractors will marshal the workforce, logistics, and infrastructure the agency demands without substantial assurances. By boosting guarantees and eliminating the cap, ICE can now fast-track an effort to place contract surveillance agents throughout its enforcement pipeline.
