Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to a company that makes “AI agents” to rapidly track down targets. The company claims the “skip tracing” AI agents help agencies find people of interest and map out their family and other associates more quickly. According to the procurement records, the company’s services were specifically for Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO), the part of ICE that identifies, arrests, and deports people.
The contract comes as ICE is spending millions of dollars, and plans to spend tens of millions more, on skip tracing services more broadly. The practice involves ICE paying bounty hunters to use digital tools and physically stalk immigrants to verify their addresses, then report that information to ICE so the agency can act.
The contractor, AI Solutions 87, claims on its website that its agents “deliver rapid acceleration in finding persons of interest and mapping their entire network.” It says the AI agents map out a target’s “services, locations, friends, family, and associates.”
The website does not detail how exactly its AI agents work or what large language model, if any, they are based on. Typically AI agents are customized versions of commercially available AI tools, such as ChatGPT, that can go onto the wider internet and perform tasks for the user, such as generating sales leads or drafting emails. In this case, AI Solutions 87 is advertising its AI agents for locating people.
On Tuesday, ICE contracted with AI Solutions 87 for $636,500, according to public procurement records. The record says the contract is specifically for skip tracing services for ICE’s ERO, the agency’s main deportation arm. Another procurement record says AI Solutions 87 is providing ICE with “skip tracing services nationwide.”
AI Solutions 87 did not respond to a request for comment on how its AI agents work. ICE did not respond to a request for comment on whether the agency specifically bought AI Solutions 87’s AI agent product.
In October, the Intercept reported on ICE’s intention to use bounty hunters or skip tracers to find targets. The skip tracing industry usually works on insurance fraud or finding people who skipped bail. Private investigators and skip tracers 404 Media spoke to had mixed reactions to ICE’s plan of using private industry in this context, with one being concerned and another saying they would do the work.
In November, 404 Media reported ICE had allocated as much as $180 million to pay these bounty hunters and private investigators. Those procurement records said ICE was seeking assistance with a “docket size” of 1.5 million. The agency would give vendors batches of 50,000 last known addresses of aliens residing in the U.S., with the bounty hunters then verifying the people’s addresses or current location, and giving that information to ICE’s ERO. In the records, ICE said contractors should start with online research or commercial data before conducting physical surveillance.
It is not clear how exactly AI Solutions 87’s AI agent tool would fit into that model, but AI agents are generally used to speed up or handle repetitive tasks. Skip tracing, broadly, can be monotonous work, according to conversations with multiple members of the skip tracing and private investigator industry.
In November, 404 Media found one contractor recruited people on LinkedIn to physically track immigrants on ICE’s behalf for $300. The project aimed to pay former law enforcement and military officers, with no indication that those being recruited were licensed private investigators, and instead was open to people who were essentially members of the general public.
ICE has spent at least $11.6 million on skip tracing services since October, according to 404 Media’s review of procurement records. That includes large federal contractors like B.I. Incorporated and SOS International LLC, and companies focused on recovering assets like Global Recovery Group LLC.
AI Solutions 87 is registered to a residential building in West Bend, Wisconsin. AI Solutions 87 shares that address with two other companies called DC Gravity LLC and SDNexus Dataops LLC formed this May, according to incorporation records. Greg Behm, who is listed as an officer for each of those companies, did not respond to a request for comment.
