The anti-migrant police force ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) was once again in the spotlight all over the world following the events in Minneapolis and the shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

Since Donald Trump’s return to the White House a year ago, this agency, which operates as a de facto militia for an increasingly authoritarian executive branch, has come under fire for its violent actions and arbitrary targeting of individuals suspected of being undocumented migrants.

Although ICE was created during the Bush administration in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, its budget has skyrocketed under the new administration. Trump’s ‘One Big, Beautiful Bill’ allocated approximately $170 billion for anti-immigration operations, including tens of billions for ICE, making it the best-funded federal agency in US history. Its budget has jumped to over $9 billion in 2025, and is expected to rise to $11 billion in 2026.

Among those that stand to benefit are a host of small and large companies that supply ICE with various goods and services, ranging from weapons and protective equipment to digital services, detention and deportation.

Bounty hunting

Among these companies, one name stands out for the French public: services giant Capgemini, one the country’s flagship corporations, a pillar of the Paris Stock Exchange that has been listed on the CAC 40 index since 1988. One of the group’s US subsidiaries, Capgemini Government Solutions, was awarded a new contract by ICE in December. Its purpose is unambiguous: to provide ‘nationwide skip tracing services’ for ICE operations.

An initial payment of $4.8 million was released in December, but the contract could ultimately earn the French company up to $365 million, depending on ’performance’ criteria. In other words, the more Capgemini Government Solutions would successfully locate migrants, the more money it would receive.

According to US government databases, Capgemini is a long-standing partner of ICE, with contracts dating back to at least 2007, some of which are worth tens of millions of dollars.

The services offered by the French giant range from ‘detention planning’ and providing for beds to IT support. The company even boasted about this partnership in the ‘customer stories’ section of its website, stating: ‘The team from Capgemini is working closely with ERO [Enforcement and Removal Operations] to help it minimize the time required and the cost incurred to remove all removable illegal aliens from the US’. This page was deleted after the publication of this article, but can still be found here.

Divestment

Following our revelation of the contract, the company’s leadership – which had so far refused to answer our questions – finally responded, first on LinkedIn through a post by CEO Aiman Ezzat, then via an internal memo.

In these communications, intended as a response to employees outraged by their company’s collaboration with the Trump administration’s most controversial agency, the managers claimed ignorance and insisted that the contract was ‘not being executed’ due to an appeal, and that it was being reviewed because the ‘skip tracing’ mission did not correspond to ‘what Capgemini usually does as a service and technology company’.

However, our research shows that on 9 October, one of Capgemini Government Solutions’ previous contracts with the Department for Homeland Security (DHS), the agency that oversees ICE, was quietly amended to add the provision of ‘skip tracing’ services for the anti-migrant police, for more than $7 million.

On 31 October 2025, ICE officially launched a broader call for tenders for skip tracing services, to which Capgemini responded, winning the lion’s share of the contract in December. US media outlet The Intercept has listed the companies that were awarded the contract. Capgemini Government Solutions comes first with a potential $365 million, followed by Bluehawk, a company that had previously worked mainly with the Pentagon and intelligence agencies, with $200 million, BI, a subsidiary of the detention giant Geo Group, with $112 million, and a few others with smaller amounts. All of them, like the Capgemini subsidiary, specialise in contracting for the US federal government.

It is had to believe that the Capgemini executives in Paris were not aware of the consequences of collaborating with an agency that Donald Trump is increasingly using as his militia to instil a climate of terror among migrants and intimidate opponents in large cities and Democratic-majority states. In this case, Capgemini was no longer just providing logistical support, but was now at the heart of the machine.

An extraordinary board meeting of Capgemini was eventually called on Saturday 31 January, after which it was announced that the French company would divest from this subsidiary to put an end to the scandal which was continuing to escalate in France, reaching the political sphere.

The ICE windfall

Capgemini is certainly not the only major corporation working with ICE. In previous articles, Observatoire des multinationales has drawn drew attention to the roles of consulting firm Deloitte and of Palantir, the digital services firm founded by Peter Thiel. Last September, Capgemini’s CGT union warned of the company’s rapprochement with Palantir. At this stage, it is not known what tools Capgemini would have been using on behalf of ICE in its skip tracing mission and whether they include Palantir’s.

Among ICE’s preferred suppliers are private detention and prison companies such as CoreCivic and Geo Group, which saw their profits skyrocket in 2025, security firms such as G4S, arms companies such as Glock and Atlantic Diving Supply. Surveillance and facial recognition specialists such as Clearview and the Israeli company Cellebrite are also involved.

Some of the agency’s partners are well-known consumer brands such as Dell, Motorola, Comcast, FedEx and Xerox. Ultimately, Trump’s anti-migrant policy has been a real boon for many local and national companies, which some members of the Trump administration or their relatives have also sought to take advantage of personally.

With ICE activities at the centre of the resistance to Trump and his policies, companies that do business with the agency are particularly targeted by opponents in the United States, through boycott campaigns or challenged by employees. In this case, employee furore proved decisive in Capgemini’s decision to divest.