DHS Is Hiring Bounty Hunters to Find and Photograph Deported People’s Homes Abroad

A $60B Vote of Confidence

The US Department of Homeland Security is seeking to hire private investigators to track down deported immigrants and others who have left the United States, and press them into paying the government money. The work would cover Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala, and potentially other countries. The documents, which cap the so-called Tracing and Payment Recovery Services program at $9 million over the next two years, call for "commercial data verification and physical observation services" to confirm where each person lives. They list photographs of the home as acceptable evidence, along with records such as utility bills, employment files, court documents, or, if the person has died, a death certificate. The US government will also accept other documentation, so long as it deems it "relevant and credible." Contractors are also required to deliver a printed flyer, approved by the US government and printed in English and Spanish, listing outstanding fines and fees CBP claims they owe.

The US government will forgive failure-to-depart fines if people self-deport using the CBP Home app. However, the waiver does not include a separate $5,130 fee Congress created last year for people ordered removed in absentia and later arrested by ICE, which the statute bars from waiving or reducing. Someone who left through the app on the promise of a clean slate could still carry that balance.

Alina Das, a law professor and director of NYU's Immigrant Rights Clinic, says going after people who have left the country with outstanding fines would be a "significant escalation in tactics." Charles Moore, a senior attorney at Public Justice, says that the move is "part and parcel" with the Trump administration's harsh anti-immigration efforts and that it is likely meant to deter people in the countries targeted from wanting to come to the US in the future.

The three debt collection agencies CBP already uses have tried to reach people overseas by letter and phone. As of July, according to the documents, they had not located a single person outside the US. At that time, they say, the government had removed an estimated 66,387 people carrying unpaid CBP fines and penalties. CBP referred WIRED's questions to DHS, which did not provide a comment before publication.

Mexico's foreign ministry, Guatemala's ministry of foreign affairs, and Honduras's secretariat of foreign affairs did not respond to questions about whether the United States had consulted them or whether they would cooperate with the contractors. "It makes no sense to go after people here if they don't have the money," says Shafiqullah, who is suing the federal government over the fines. "Presumably they don't have the money there, and they're not subject to collections. What's the point of this?"

Senators Dick Durbin and Alex Padilla wrote to acting attorney general Todd Blanche and Homeland Security secretary Markwayne Mullin in July, asking them to stop applying the fines to immigrants who are complying with the law. They asked how many penalties had gone to people with pending or lawful status, or to survivors of domestic violence and trafficking, and how many had been referred to private debt collectors. They asked for answers by July 31. Durbin's office tells WIRED neither department responded.

"Since day one, the Trump administration has carried out a vindictive mass deportation campaign, which has included slapping arbitrary and potentially unlawful $1.8 million fines on Dreamers, survivors of domestic violence, and green card applicants," Durbin says. "And now—after decrying 'government waste' and slashing essential health care programs—the Trump Administration is burning taxpayer dollars to chase down immigrants who followed their directives to leave the country."

Contractors hired under the Tracing and Payment Recovery Services program would be paid a set fee for each person they document notifying, with tiered bonuses if they report back within seven, 14, or 28 days of CBP handing over the person's information. No part of the payment depends on money being recovered. The government would own all data the investigators gather, with unlimited rights to reuse it and build on it. The only payment method presented is the federal website Pay.gov, which the documents note requires a US bank account. If civil penalties are collected under the program, they would be deposited into the Immigration Enforcement Account, a fund Congress created to pay for identifying, apprehending, detaining, and removing immigrants.