Kristi Noem may be looking to supplement her beleaguered Department of Homeland Security recruitment drive by bringing in bounty hunters to round up undocumented migrants.
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement procurement document, obtained by The Intercept, shows that the department is exploring the possibility of hiring private contractors to take on batches of up to one million immigrants at a time.
If plans go ahead, the notice suggests “monetary bonuses” may be rolled out as part of an “incentive based pricing structure” for bounty hunters who deliver exceptional results, like finding someone on a first try or tracking down 90 percent of targets within a particular time frame.
Launching an effective domestic war on immigration was one of President Donald Trump’s key campaign pledges last year, with top officials like White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller since framing his ongoing deportation drive as a countermeasure to an “invasion” of “criminals” across U.S. borders.
Nicknamed ‘ICE Barbie’ after her penchant for cosplaying like an immigration enforcement agent, Noem received an estimated $75 billion under the Trump administration’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” spending measures earlier in July, largely to help buoy a massive drive to recruit 10,000 new immigration officers by the start of next year.
News the department may now be going private with its nationwide migrant purge comes amid reports that more than a third of new ICE recruits are failing to pass the most basic fitness tests.
“It’s pathetic,” one official told The Atlantic last month of the number of prospective agents unable to muster 15 push-ups, 32 sit-ups, and a mile-and-a-half run in under 14 minutes.
Those standards, considered “the minimum for any officer,” have already been eased amid the hiring blitz.
Axios has since separately reported that much of the cash allotted for recruitment under the Trump administration’s spending measures has now instead been put toward a host of new surveillance equipment and software.
These include biometric data systems, access to real-time location tracking services, facial recognition algorithms and tools for remotely accessing smartphones.
DHS’s procurement notice, issued on Oct. 31, in turn suggests private contractors would be expected to execute their duties with the help of “government furnished case data.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the department for comment.
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