ICE’s lead contractor for a new program to covertly surveil and photograph undocumented immigrants across the United States said after pressure from French officials that its contract is not being executed, in a rare rebuke of the agency by one of its own suppliers.
In December, Immigration and Customs Enforcement quietly began a nationwide program to track 1.5 million undocumented immigrants through paid contractors using a combination of remote technologies and on-the-ground surveillance.
The contracts ICE secured for what it calls “Skip Tracing Services” — a term commonly applied to finding people who have defaulted on loans — could run to hundreds of millions of dollars over two years, according to ICE procurement filings. The program creates a nationwide force of plainclothes, nongovernment monitors to track and photograph immigrants on behalf of ICE. According to the filings, the initiative is intended to serve as a force multiplier for ICE, potentially helping to accelerate the agency’s raids and deportations this year.
A U.S. subsidiary of Paris-based Capgemini, one of Europe’s largest tech and consulting multinationals with more than 350,000 employees worldwide, signed a contract with ICE last month with an initial $4.8 million order for the first three months and a $365 million ceiling over two years, according to federal procurement records, making it the largest award among the 14 vendors — including defense contractors and local private-eye firms — selected for the program.
But Capgemini said Thursday in a statement to The Washington Post that the contract is not currently being executed, two days after French Finance Minister Roland Lescure demanded that the company explain the contract.
“We can confirm that according to the information we have, the contract awarded in December 2025 is not, as of today, being executed,” Capgemini spokeswoman Victoire Grux said.
Capgemini CEO Aiman Ezzat said in a post on LinkedIn on Sunday that the independent board of directors of the U.S. subsidiary, Capgemini Government Solutions, was reviewing “the content and scope” of its work under the contract.
“The nature and scope of this work has raised questions compared to what we typically do as a business and technology firm,” Ezzat wrote.
The internal review at Capgemini comes as the killing of a second American citizen in Minneapolis has sparked criticism from business executives who up until now had stayed quiet about Trump’s deportation campaign. Apple CEO Tim Cook and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told their staffs this week they were troubled by ICE’s actions, as lower-level tech industry workers across Silicon Valley demanded their companies cease business with the agency. (The Washington Post has a content partnership with OpenAI.) Companies with ongoing contracts with ICE, however, have generally been reticent about any such concerns.
The Department of Homeland Security, of which ICE is a part, gave The Post some details earlier about the skip-tracing program. But neither DHS nor ICE immediately responded Thursday to requests to clarify why Capgemini’s contract was not proceeding and whether the program plans had changed more broadly.
“Contract vendors are not making any apprehensions,” DHS said last week. “Under the Trump Administration, DHS will continue to use every tool in its toolbox to defend the American people from dangerous foreign criminals. Through this program, which began in December, ICE aims to verify and update alien address information as well as serve official documents.”
ICE told prospective contractors in a written Q&A in November that the intelligence they gathered may lead to raids. The government, it said, “may send correspondence to the alien or take an enforcement action.”
DHS said such “information sharing” between the government and private companies was “not unusual” and complied with all legal and privacy requirements. The department declined to detail what kinds of technologies contractors will use to track down targets, or to say whether they will be armed while conducting surveillance on the ground.
The skip-tracing contractors will each receive 50,000 names a month to track down, with financial bonuses if they can locate the individuals faster, according to ICE documents outlining the program. “During attempts to locate an alien, the vendor will not discuss the nature of the case with any other party,” an ICE overview of the program said.
For each individual on their list, contractors will receive the name, date of birth, country of citizenship, last known address, photo, telephone number, email address and possibly other information from ICE, according to an overview of the program issued to prospective contractors in November. The contractors are directed to use “all technology systems available” first to try to identify where the individuals live and work, and to then proceed to “physical, in-person surveillance” when necessary for confirmation.
ICE said contractors should provide “time-stamped photographs” along with a written description of the visit to confirm the individual’s place of residence or work, or to explain why taking photographs was not appropriate in that instance. They will receive differential incentive pay if they verify an individual’s location within 7 days or 14 days.
“The overall desire is to complete cases as quickly as possible,” ICE told contractors. “The incentive structure is intended to reward for rapid completion.”
The program could help ICE reduce mistaken identities during raids. But critics say the skip-tracing program would further decentralize and diffuse responsibility for ICE’s actions on the ground, at a time of broadscale protests over accountability for federal immigration officers.
Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Illinois), who introduced a bill last week that would ban such contracts, told The Post in a statement that he believed that ICE’s outsourcing of surveillance “further corrupts an enterprise that already acts with impunity.”
“There is no justification for outsourcing coercive power to for-profit, armed private bounty hunters who would operate with even fewer safeguards,” he said.
Hiring private eyes to locate individuals, or “skip tracing,” is a legal practice often used by debt collectors, process servers and bail bondsmen to track down individuals who owe money or to serve legal papers. Using such services to staff up a large-scale federal surveillance program of a demographic is unusual in the United States, where there are Fourth Amendment protections against sweeping searches.
Lescure, the French finance minister, told the country’s lawmakers Tuesday that he had just asked Capgemini about the contract and found its response that the parent company had no insight into details of its subsidiary’s contract “insufficient.” He said he was urging Capgemini to explain the contract with “complete transparency” and to question its nature.
The French newswire AFP reported that the company has scheduled an extraordinary board meeting this weekend about the controversy and had sent staff an internal message saying the contract was “subject to legal challenge.”
Ezzat wrote on Sunday that the subsidiary operates with fire walls from the parent company due to classified contracts for the U.S. government, and that the unit has worked with DHS for 15 years.
“We were recently made aware, through public sources, of the nature of a contract awarded to CGS by DHS’ Immigration and Customs Enforcement in December 2025,” he wrote. “… In full respect of the separate governance and restrictions of CGS, I have been informed that the independent board of directors has already begun the process of reviewing the content and scope of this contract and CGS contracting procedures.”
ICE’s other contractors for the program include several military contractors, including Florida-based Bluehawk LLC and Virginia-based firms SOS International, Response AI Solutions and Constellis. The agency also hired several local private-eye firms, including Ohio-based Gravitas Investigations and Texas-based Fraud Inc.
Constellis, a successor firm to Erik Prince’s controversial private military contractor Blackwater, told The Post in a statement that its skip-tracing task order is “pending with the customer” for its subsidiary Omniplex.
“For more than 30 years, Omniplex has supported background investigations with detailed reports that enable agencies to make informed decisions,” Constellis said. “We leverage AI-driven queries and data source partnerships to rapidly validate information, ensuring accuracy, efficiency, and high confidence in reporting.”
Fraud Inc. referred questions to ICE. Bluehawk, SOS International, Response AI Solutions and Gravitas Investigations did not respond to requests for comment.
Another skip-tracing contractor, the Geo Group, also operates ICE detention centers. It referred questions from The Post to ICE but earlier issued a press release saying that a skip-tracing contract of its wholly owned subsidiary BI Incorporated began Dec. 16 and would bring in an estimated $121 million in revenue over two years.
“The expansion of our services addressing the non detained docket through this new contract is a testament to the high-quality solutions BI has provided to ICE for more than 21 years,” Geo Group executive chairman George Zoley said in the statement.
None of the 14 contractors were willing to share details with The Post about what surveillance technologies they planned to use or what their protocols would be for staffers carrying out on-the-ground tailing. The Intercept and 404 Media have previously reported on some details of the program.
While ICE originally set a cap of $180 million for the program budget over two years, the agency lifted the ceiling in November. The agency told prospective contractors in the written Q&A in November that the “chain of command” between the agency and the vendors “will be established post award.”
When one contractor asked in the Q&A if there are restrictions to their covert surveillance activities, ICE left much up to the companies. “It is incumbent upon the vendor to determine how best to meet the Government’s needs and requirements” it said. “Vendors must comply with all federal, state, and local requirements and certifications as a part of this contract. Vendors are not government agents nor is there any implied or actual designation of legal authority.”
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