ICE is paying 18 private companies to find young immigrants like Nicole at home, confirm where they live, gather information about the people sheltering them, and update the records of the federal agency empowered to detain and deport them. The contracts place 100,000 unaccompanied immigrant children and 250,000 young adults who entered the United States as unaccompanied children inside a nationwide locating operation built to reach their doors. Nicole belongs to the generation ICE is paying those companies to find.
She was 15 when she left Honduras in 2019 with her aunt and cousin. For months, they moved north through Mexico on foot before climbing aboard La Bestia, the freight train migrants ride knowing that boarding, falling, or jumping from it can cost them their lives. Nicole made that journey because she wanted a future beyond the dangers and lost opportunities she saw around her.
After reaching the United States, Nicole reunited with her father in Texas, attended school, obtained work authorization, found employment, and entered college. Now 21 and living in New York, she works part-time in an eye doctor’s office while studying to become a teacher. She has Special Immigrant Juvenile status and deferred action, but she has waited years for the opportunity to apply for permanent residence. The life she built remains exposed to the immigration-enforcement agency now paying contractors to confirm where she lives.
When Nicole was younger, social workers visited the home where she was staying to check whether she had food, a safe place to live, and access to school. Those visits were connected to the federal system responsible for placing unaccompanied children with adult sponsors and monitoring their welfare after release. ICE has taken the recognizable form of those visits and converted it into access for immigration enforcement.
Under the Safety Verification Initiative, ICE requires contractors to visit addresses associated with unaccompanied children and young adults who entered the United States as unaccompanied children, assess conditions at the home, confirm the address listed in immigration-court records, inform the child and sponsor about their legal responsibilities, and enter the information they collect into ICE systems. The earlier social-worker visits focused on Nicole’s safety. The ICE-directed visits establish where young immigrants and the people sheltering them can be found.
That difference reaches into every part of a young immigrant’s life. These addresses belong to homes where young people study, live with relatives, eat with their families, and wait through immigration cases that consume years of their lives. When ICE sends a contractor to one of those homes, the agency converts a private living space into a verified location inside its enforcement system.
For Nicole, an unfamiliar vehicle now carries the threat that ICE has found her address. That threat reaches her education, employment, family relationships, housing stability, immigration case, and the classroom she hopes one day to lead. The home where she rebuilt her life is now part of an ICE locating system designed to identify where she and her family live.
The contractors are paid according to the number of unaccompanied children and young adults who entered the United States as unaccompanied children they successfully visit, and each company must complete at least 1,000 home visits. ICE has attached a financial incentive to locating young immigrants, confirming their addresses, documenting their households, and returning that information to the agency. The payment structure rewards companies for reaching more homes occupied by children, students, workers, sponsors, and families.
The companies ICE selected deepen the harm facing the people receiving those visits. A Scripps News review found no publicly identified child-welfare services for 12 of the 18 contractors. National Protective Services advertises fugitive recovery, locksmith services, and self-defense karate. ICE awarded the company an initial contract worth $1.2 million with a maximum value of $207 million. Severance Security Services advertises armed security, disaster response, and workplace-violence prevention. ICE awarded it an initial contract worth $4.8 million with a maximum value of $358 million.
The initial awards and contract ceilings establish the scale of the private infrastructure ICE has authorized. The agency is not sending these companies to connect Nicole and other young immigrants with housing, education, healthcare, or legal representation. ICE is sending them to verify addresses, assess household conditions, inform children and sponsors about legal responsibilities, and return updated information to an immigration-enforcement database. The companies’ security and fugitive-recovery backgrounds matter because ICE is directing them to the homes of vulnerable children and young adults under the label of safety verification.
The Department of Homeland Security describes the program as an effort to protect vulnerable children from sexual abuse and exploitation. ICE’s contract requirements establish an enforcement operation: contractors verify immigration-court addresses, inform children and sponsors about their legal responsibilities, record household information, and update ICE’s systems of record. The information gathered at those homes belongs to the agency responsible for locating, detaining, and deporting immigrants.
A March 2025 Department of Homeland Security inspector-general audit examined records for more than 448,000 children transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services between fiscal years 2019 and 2023. The audit identified more than 31,000 release addresses that were blank, undeliverable, or missing apartment numbers. It documented failures in federal recordkeeping, not the disappearance of 31,000 children.
The Trump administration responded to defective government records by sending ICE contractors to immigrant homes. Children and young adults who did not create those records, control those databases, or decide how federal agencies maintained their information are being forced to absorb the consequences through surveillance, fear, household exposure, and direct contact with immigration enforcement.
Each address directs contractors to a home where parents, sponsors, siblings, relatives, roommates, and other immigrants live. The people who agreed to shelter children are pulled into ICE scrutiny because they opened their doors to someone who needed safety. A placement record created to connect a child with a sponsor becomes a route into the sponsor’s household.
Michael Lukens, executive director of the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, described the initiative as a facade designed to help DHS find children, pressure them to leave the United States, identify the people living with them, and make collateral arrests. ICE’s contracts establish the machinery behind that warning by ordering companies to locate homes, verify addresses, assess household conditions, inform children and sponsors about legal responsibilities, and update enforcement records.
ICE is turning contact associated with child safety into an enforcement pathway in which placement records, addresses maintained in immigration-court records, and sponsorship information expose entire households to the agency. Placement records created to help children reach safety now direct ICE contractors to the homes where those children and their families live.
ICE is using records created when children needed protection to find them after they have built lives in the United States. The agency is taking information gathered through childhood placement and converting it into updated enforcement records showing where young immigrants and their families live.
Nicole followed the processes placed before her. She attended school, obtained legal protection and authorization to work, entered college, found a job, and began preparing for a career teaching children. She has spent years waiting for the immigration system to decide whether she can move toward permanent residence, while ICE builds a contractor network capable of locating her at home.
She survived the journey north at 15 because she wanted something different for her life. She crossed Mexico, rode La Bestia, reunited with her father, entered classrooms, and built a future through work and study. ICE has placed that future inside a private-contractor locating system that uses her childhood records to confirm where she lives, expose the people around her, and bring the life she built within reach of detention and deportation.
Nicole crossed countries as a child to build a future. ICE is now paying private companies to find the home where she built it. Americans Against ICE documents the enforcement systems targeting immigrant children, young adults, sponsors, and families—and keeps the people harmed by them at the center of the public record.
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