Trump Administration Seeks Contractors to Track Deported Migrants Abroad and Collect Immigration Fines

For generations, deportation has carried an obvious finality. A person is removed from the United States, crosses the border or boards a flight, and American immigration enforcement largely disappears from daily life. The Trump administration is testing a very different idea.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is seeking private contractors that could locate deported migrants after they have returned to countries such as Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras, verify where they live, and personally deliver notices for immigration fines the federal government says remain unpaid. The proposed Tracing and Payment Recovery Services program could be worth up to $9 million over two years.

The striking part of the proposal is not simply that Washington wants unpaid fines collected. It is that immigration enforcement could now follow a person home, across an international border and potentially all the way to the front door.

Private contractors could become America’s immigration tracers abroad

The proposed contractors would do considerably more than mail collection letters.

Procurement documents reviewed by WIRED describe “commercial data verification and physical observation services” designed to establish where a targeted individual currently lives. Contractors could use photographs of a residence, utility records, employment information, court documents and other evidence considered credible by the government.

Once an address is verified, investigators would be expected to deliver an English-and-Spanish government notice detailing the fines and fees CBP says are outstanding.

That makes this program unusual. The people being sought are already outside the United States. Instead of federal immigration officers pursuing someone for removal, a private investigator could be pursuing someone who has already been removed because the government’s financial claim survived the journey home.

Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras are specifically named, but the documents leave room for work in additional countries.

A decades-old law is producing potentially enormous bills

The penalties behind the program come from a federal immigration law enacted in 1996 and revived as a major enforcement tool under President Donald Trump.

Certain people who fail to comply with final removal orders can face civil penalties that have been adjusted for inflation to as much as $998 per day. When those penalties accumulate over years, the result can reach extraordinary levels.

Some migrants have received assessments approaching $1.8 million.

Those fines are already being challenged in federal court. A lawsuit seeking class-action status argues that the penalties can be excessive and violate due-process protections. DHS has defended the policy, saying federal immigration law provides consequences for people who fail to comply with removal requirements.

The litigation matters because overseas tracing adds another layer to the dispute. A person living thousands of miles from the United States may now have to figure out how to challenge an American government debt while navigating a foreign legal and banking system.

The government has issued billions in immigration penalties

The overseas plan is emerging from a much larger financial enforcement campaign.

As of July, DHS said it had issued more than $84 billion in immigration-related fines, according to the contracting documents and reporting on the program.

That figure sounds like an enormous potential source of federal revenue, but there is an important gap between issuing a fine and actually collecting one.

Someone who has returned to a lower-income community in Central America may have little realistic ability to pay a six- or seven-figure American government assessment.

That makes the economics of the proposed contract especially interesting.

Contractors would reportedly receive payment for successfully locating and notifying individuals, with potential bonuses tied to how quickly they complete the assignment. Their compensation would not depend on whether the migrant actually pays the government.

In other words, taxpayers could pay to find someone even when the government ultimately collects nothing.

The payment problem reveals the program’s biggest contradiction

Even successfully locating a deported migrant does not guarantee there is an easy way to receive the money.

The procurement documents identify the federal system as the payment mechanism and note a requirement involving access to a U.S. bank account. They also indicate that another party may make a payment on behalf of the person who owes the fine. That could place American relatives in an uncomfortable position.

Many immigrant families include people with different citizenship or immigration statuses. A deported parent or spouse could be living abroad while relatives remain legally in the United States. A massive debt notice delivered overseas could therefore create financial pressure on family members who never incurred the penalty themselves.

The government’s ability to locate a debtor may ultimately prove much greater than that debtor’s ability to pay.

CBP Home makes the message more complicated

There is another wrinkle.

DHS has actively encouraged migrants to voluntarily leave the United States through the CBP Home app, offering travel assistance and forgiveness of certain civil penalties for failing to depart. The department publicly announced its fine-forgiveness policy in June 2025.

That does not mean every possible immigration debt disappears when someone leaves. Different penalties can arise under different circumstances.

Still, the combination creates a message that may be difficult for migrants to interpret: leave voluntarily and qualifying failure-to-depart fines may be forgiven. Yet, other outstanding federal debts could potentially follow a person into another country.

Immigration advocates argue that pursuing people after departure undermines the administration’s broader effort to encourage voluntary exits. The government, however, retains authority to pursue penalties it considers legally valid unless they have been waived or successfully challenged.

Deportation may no longer be the last chapter

The deeper significance of the proposal has little to do with collection notices.

It is about how far the machinery of American immigration enforcement can extend.

The administration has already embraced private skip-tracing companies inside the United States. ICE previously awarded contracts to 13 companies that could be worth a combined $1.2 billion to help locate migrants domestically. The new CBP proposal would take a similar private-contractor model and point it beyond U.S. territory.

If the program moves forward, deportation would no longer necessarily close a person’s financial relationship with the American immigration system.

A migrant could leave the United States, rebuild life in another country and still discover that Washington is looking for an address.

That is what makes this proposal bigger than a $9 million government contract. It suggests that for some deported migrants, America’s immigration enforcement system may no longer end at the border.