ICE Hires Immigrant Bounty Hunters From Private Prison Company GEO Group

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has hired a subsidiary of for-profit prison company GEO Group to aid in hunting down immigrants at their homes and places of work, according to records reviewed by The Intercept.

ICE has secured a deal with surveillance firm BI Incorporated as part of a new program, first reported in October by The Intercept, to use private bounty hunters to determine the locations of immigrants in exchange for monetary bonuses.

BI, which was acquired by the GEO Group in 2011, is one of several firms hired by ICE to provide “skip tracing” services, in which its teams of corporate investigators will use surveillance to track immigrants across the country to their homes and places of work so federal agents can easily swoop in and make arrests.

Records show ICE has already paid BI $1.6 million, with the potential for the contract to grow to as much as $121 million by the time it concludes in 2027.

ICE’s push to privatize its hunt for immigrants has drawn the scrutiny of Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., who warned it “invites the very abuses, secrecy, and corruption our founders sought to prevent.”

Neither BI Incorporated nor GEO Group immediately responded to a request for comment.

The deal illustrates a strategy of vertical integration within GEO Group, which has found a growing line of business operating for-profit immigration detention centers under the second Trump administration. In this case, the corporation stands to be paid by the federal government to both find immigrants and then to imprison them.

Shares of GEO Group, which donated to both Trump’s reelection campaign and his inaugural fund, spiked following his 2024 victory. Trump’s return to office has proven fortuitous for GEO Group: The president’s “Big Beautiful Bill” earmarked $45 billion for jailing immigrants. “This is a unique moment in our company’s history,” GEO Group CEO J. David Donahue told investors in May, “and we believe we are well-positioned to meet this unprecedented opportunity.”

GEO Group has faced decades of criticism over alleged mismanagement of its facilities and claims of rampant abuse of inmates. In August, The Intercept reported the suicide of a Chinese immigrant held at a GEO Group-operated prison in Pennsylvania. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal complaint over the facility in July, criticizing “horrific conditions” at the prison, including repeated instances of medical neglect.

In 2023, GEO Group was hit by a class-action lawsuit alleging the “months-long poisoning” from a chemical disinfectant of more than 1,300 inmates at a California immigration detention center. In May, Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk, jailed for her criticism of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, alleged her GEO Group-managed jail delayed treatment while she experienced an asthma attack.

The ICE contract record does not say whether BI would provide on-the-ground bounty hunting services, software-based investigative services, or a combination of both. ICE has previously told potential bounty hunting contractors, “It is dependent upon the vendor to complete the work required by contract,” but “Should a vendor choose to subcontract, that is at their discretion,” according to procurement correspondence reviewed by The Intercept.

BI has a long history in immigrant surveillance, having received hundreds of millions of dollars from the government to date through past contracts for ankle monitor-based tracking. The company specializes in remote surveillance and person-monitoring services, including sales of GPS bracelets and other tracking devices. “Location tracking enables individuals to work and live in the community while being monitored closely for curfews, movement, and more,” according to the company’s website. “BI offers ankle bracelet, wrist-worn, and mobile tracking solutions to meet the needs of varying risk levels.”

BI also touts its suite of software products, including case management applications for monitoring the movements of immigrants and other targets, as well as tools that allow agencies to chart a target’s “geographic and spatial location data” across Google Maps. It is unknown if the company has access to commercial mobile device locational data, or relies solely on body-mounted trackers.

But with many years of detailed GPS data pertaining to the every movement of hundreds of thousands of immigrants, BI and GEO Group hold a trove of locational information that would be of obvious value to the bounty hunting initiative.

In a November contracting document pertaining to the skip tracing effort, ICE told potential bounty hunting vendors they are “expected to provide their own internal skip tracing tools,” providing contractors with a great deal of latitude to employ surveillance products and techniques of their choosing. The document further noted that private ICE bounty hunters will not be provided credentials to identify them as agents of the government.

404 Media reported Thursday that ICE had also contracted with AI Solutions 87, “a company that makes ‘AI agents’ to rapidly track down targets.”