US Customs and Border Protection is looking to hire private investigators to find deported immigrants and others who have left the United States, and push them to pay money owed to the government, according to records reviewed by WIRED. The work would cover Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala, and possibly other countries.
The program, called Tracing and Payment Recovery Services, is capped at $9 million over the next two years. The documents call for “commercial data verification and physical observation services” to confirm where each person lives. Photographs of the person’s home would count as acceptable proof, along with utility bills, employment records, court documents, or, if the person has died, a death certificate.
Contractors would also have to hand out a printed flyer, approved by the US government and written in English and Spanish, that lists the fines and fees CBP says the person owes.
DHS has issued more than $84 billion in fines under a law from 1996
As of July, the Department of Homeland Security says it has issued more than $84 billion in fines to immigrants accused of failing to leave the country. The fines are based on a little-used part of a 1996 immigration law that went unused until Donald Trump’s first term. People still in the country can be charged $998 a day for up to five years, with some fines reaching as high as $1.8 million.
Hasan Shafiqullah, the Legal Aid Society’s immigration supervising attorney, says he has seen third-party collection agencies add $500,000 in extra administrative fees on top of what the government already charges. A report from New York University School of Law’s Immigrant Rights Clinic found that immigrants who got these fine notices have had their tax returns seized, wages garnished, and credit scores damaged.
DHS says it will forgive these fines if people leave the country on their own using the CBP Home app. But a CBP spokesperson said, “Individuals who choose not to take advantage of available self-departure options via CBP Home may remain subject to previously assessed fines or penalties for failure to depart the U.S. even after they departed the country.”
A separate $5,130 fee for people ordered removed and later arrested by ICE cannot be waived under the law, meaning someone who left through the app could still owe that amount.
Alina Das, a law professor and director of NYU’s Immigrant Rights Clinic, called the plan to chase people abroad a “significant escalation in tactics.” Charles Moore, a senior attorney at Public Justice, said the move is “part and parcel” with the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement efforts and may be meant to discourage people in those countries from trying to come to the US.
This program is one of several tactics reportedly aimed at pressuring immigrants to self-deport that have drawn scrutiny in recent months. The three debt collection agencies CBP currently uses have tried contacting people overseas by letter and phone but had not located a single person outside the US as of July, according to the documents. At that point, the government said it had removed about 66,387 people who still owed CBP fines and penalties.
Contractors hired for the program would get a set payment for each person they find and notify, plus bonuses for reporting back within seven, 14, or 28 days. The payment does not depend on whether any money is actually collected. The government would own all the data investigators gather and could reuse it freely. The only accepted payment method is Pay.gov, which requires a US bank account.
Money collected through the program would go into the Immigration Enforcement Account, a fund Congress set up to pay for finding, arresting, detaining, and removing immigrants. The documents note that payments “may be made by the individual or another party,” which could mean family members still in the US feel pressure to pay on someone else’s behalf.
The documents do not say where the “commercial data” used to track people would come from or how contractors would get access to foreign records. Companies would have to explain their tracking methods only after the work has already started.
CBP released the bidding documents on Tuesday and gave companies until Friday, August 7, to submit bids, saying late submissions would not be accepted because of time pressure. Questions from companies were due by Wednesday afternoon.
Shafiqullah questioned the purpose of the plan. “It makes no sense to go after people here if they don’t have the money,” he said. “Presumably they don’t have the money there, and they’re not subject to collections. What’s the point of this?” A CBP spokesperson responded that the agency “supports efforts to ensure that individuals meet their legal obligations, including payment of immigration-related fines and other debts owed to the U.S. government.”
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 complying with the law and to answer questions about how many penalties went to people with pending or lawful status. Durbin’s office told WIRED that neither department responded by the July 31 deadline they had requested.
The plan follows a similar model ICE has already used inside the US. In December, ICE awarded skip-tracing contracts worth up to $1.2 billion combined over two years to 13 private companies, which are paid bonuses based on how many people they find.
One of those vendors has already come under scrutiny after reports questioned its hiring and vetting practices. Sharon Bradford Franklin, former chairwoman of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, told Scripps News the arrangement makes those companies function essentially as ICE bounty hunters.
Published: Aug 9, 2026 12:00 pm