US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has awarded a contract to a private security company that has faced accusations of “torture” and “enforced disappearance” to assist in tracking down undocumented immigrant children who arrived in the US alone, a contracting document shows.
ICE has stepped up its work so much in pursuing these minors in the US that it has contracted out some of its mission to a third party to put “boots on the ground” and locate immigrant children previously released from US government custody.
But an internal ICE document reviewed by the Guardian last year shows ICE actually runs the operations with the aim of deporting the children or pursuing criminal cases against them – or their adult sponsors sheltering them legally in the US. A critic at the time called ICE’s efforts “backdoor family separation”.
They seem underqualified. I mean, allegedly they know how to “torture”, but we don’t even have proof of that yet, and even if they do, that doesn’t mean they know how to torture children. ICE should probably maintain their strict standards to ensure they can do their job properly instead of hiring out to these sketchy “maybe able to torture undocumented children” third-parties.