In February, at the start of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, news broke that a group of military contractors was circulating a blueprint for mass deportations, to be carried out by private contractors.
Led by Erik Prince, Donald Trump ally and founder of the notorious mercenary firm Blackwater, the group proposed (among other ideas) that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) create a “skip tracing team” that would send out private contractors to hunt down immigrants targeted for deportation, per reporting at the time by Politico.
Now, there are indications ICE is carrying out those plans.
Last month, the Lever revealed that ICE had signed a $7 million contract with defense contractor SOS International for “skip tracing services.” SOS International, also known as SOSi, has long done business with the federal government, including working with the US military in Afghanistan — and has business ties to one of the military contractors whose name was listed alongside Prince’s in the proposal.
It was the first time, per online federal procurement databases, that an ICE contract description contained the phrase “skip tracing,” a term usually associated with debt collection and bounty hunting. There was little further detail about the services SOSi would provide to Trump’s immigration enforcers.
The contract — with its eerie callback to the Prince deportation blueprint — appears not to be a fluke. Several days later, ICE signed another “skip tracing” contract, this time worth up to $33.5 million, with international debt collector Global Recovery Group LLC.
Then, on Friday, October 31, as the Intercept first reported, ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations bureau, the agency’s primary deportation arm, released procurement documents that mapped out new plans to create a bounty-hunting program that would deploy skip tracing methods. Though the documents are preliminary, ICE’s proposed program hews closely…
Auteur: Katya Schwenk
