1. United States
2. Mass.
3. Letter

I am writing to urge you to immediately call for congressional hearings on a deeply concerning pilot program being conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This program aims to pay former law enforcement and military personnel $300 per target to physically track immigrants and verify their addresses for ICE enforcement actions. This initiative represents a dangerous escalation of immigration enforcement tactics. It effectively deputizes civilians without proper oversight or training to conduct surveillance on vulnerable populations. There is no indication that licensed private investigators are involved. Instead, the program appears open to members of the general public with law enforcement or military backgrounds. The pilot is reportedly part of a broader ICE plan to use bounty hunters or skip tracers to confirm immigrants' addresses through data mining and physical surveillance. Some recruits were told they would be given vehicles to monitor targets. This raises serious concerns about privacy violations, potential for confrontation, and lack of due process. Jim Brown, president of government contractor Feds United and former ICE official, publicly recruited for this project on LinkedIn in October. While not naming ICE directly, sources confirm the work involves verifying information for the agency. The Department of Homeland Security has already signed a $7 million contract with SOSi for skip tracing services. The scale of this initiative is alarming. ICE documents indicate plans to locate up to 1 million immigrants, with a potential "docket size" of 1.5 million. This represents a massive expansion of surveillance on immigrant communities by untrained civilians. I urge you to call for immediate congressional hearings to investigate this program. We need transparency on its legal justification, operational details, and safeguards against abuse. The use of bounty hunters to track immigrants is a dangerous overreach that demands thorough scrutiny and likely termination before it can expand further.