CBP Formally Hires Contractors to Collect Fines From People It Has Deported

The $36 million effort, spread across four companies, relies on firms already working to locate immigrants for the government's deportation surge.

Customs and Border Protection awarded contracts today to four companies to collect immigration fines from people the United States has deported, ending a competition that closed earlier this month after an unusually brief bidding period.

Each contract is capped at $9 million and was issued by the same contracting office. The winners are Global Recovery Group, Caduceus, Response AI Solutions and the Baptiste Group.

The agency wants contractors to travel to homes in Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala, confirm that a deported person lives there and get that person to photograph their own face as proof that a fine notice was delivered, according to solicitation documents reported this month by Project Salt Box. The agency told bidders it had not identified a way for people without a U.S. bank account to pay what they owe, and said the winning contractor would have to propose a solution.

All four companies have held immigration-related federal contracts before.

Global Recovery Group and Response AI Solutions have done skip tracing for the government, locating targets of interest for Immigration and Customs Enforcement removal operations. Global Recovery Group is doing it now under two orders this year that commit about $8.5 million, more than $7 million of which has been paid. Response AI Solutions' skip-tracing order, now completed, was worth $127,920.

Caduceus, the Baptiste Group and Response AI Solutions have done what the government calls “safety verification and wellness checks” on unaccompanied migrant children and former unaccompanied migrant children, the term for those who crossed the border alone and were later released to sponsors in the United States.

Response AI Solutions holds its own child wellness-check order, capped at $243.4 million, with $3.67 million committed so far according to federal contracting records reviewed by Project Salt Box. It has also held a separate ICE contract in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, worth up to $10 million, awarded weeks after federal agents there, during Operation Metro Surge, fatally shot two U.S. citizens, Renee Nicole Macklin Good and Alex Pretti, in January 2026.

The Baptiste Group's history with migrant children predates this contract by several years. Federal contracting records show the same company, identified by its unique entity identifier, received a grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for residential shelter services for unaccompanied migrant children during the same fiscal years it operated a shelter in Chattanooga, Tenn. That facility's state license was suspended in 2021 after allegations of abuse.

An unannounced inspection that June turned up an allegation of child abuse and a teenager who had escaped, and the state said the children's safety required emergency action. Two staff members were later charged with sexual battery. It was the only such license Tennessee suspended in five years. The company argued in court that it had been singled out for being minority owned and serving children from Central America. It later dropped its appeal and its bid to renew the license, and settled with the state on terms that let it seek a license again.

The company remains an ICE contractor. It holds an order for wellness checks on migrant children that is capped at $291.7 million and runs through June 2027, of which about $2.07 million has been committed so far, the price of a required minimum of 1,000 cases.

ICE has also been considering the Baptiste Group for a larger detention role. Records disclosed through a federal lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union in January showed the agency was weighing the company as an operator for three potential new detention sites: a former migrant children's facility in Greensboro, N.C., that had been shut down in 2024; a second, unidentified Greensboro facility; and a site near Harrisburg, Pa.

Whether the $36 million effort will recover much — if any — money is unclear. CBP has said it identified no way for people without a U.S. bank account to pay, a problem it left for the winning contractors to solve. The agency also said it will not cover a contractor's travel costs and will pay only for people who are actually found, meaning the government could spend close to the full $36 million in fees without collecting a comparable sum in fines.

Customs and Border Protection has not said how it evaluated the bids or whether the fine contracts are connected to the children’s contracts beyond the shared contractors. The agency did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication. Representatives from Caduceus, Global Recovery Group, Response AI Solutions, and the Baptiste Group could also not be immediately reached for comment.