Constellis Holdings is a private military and security contractor that traces its corporate lineage directly to Erik Prince’s Blackwater – the mercenary firm infamous for the 2007 Nisour Square massacre in Baghdad. Now, Constellis hunts immigrants for ICE.

Corporate Genealogy

1. Blackwater USA (1997) – Founded by Erik Prince, Navy SEAL and brother of Betsy DeVos
2. Xe Services (2009) – Renamed after Blackwater’s reputation became toxic
3. Academi (2011) – Renamed again
4. Constellis (2014) – Formed through merger of Academi and Triple Canopy, another mercenary firm

ICE Skip Tracing Contract

Constellis is one of 13 vendors in the ice-skip-tracing-2025 program. On December 15, 2025, ICE signed a contract with Constellis to provide “skip tracing” services:

• Initial payment: $1.5 million
• Potential ceiling: Over $113 million
• Mission: Locating immigrants with deportation orders so ICE ERO can apprehend them
• Methods: Digital surveillance tools and physical, in-person surveillance of homes and workplaces
• No credentials: Constellis bounty hunters are not given any DHS identification while conducting surveillance

The Mercenary-to-Immigration Pipeline

The Constellis contract represents a crossing of a line: military contractors trained for overseas combat zones now conducting domestic surveillance of immigrant communities. The lack of DHS credentials means these operatives are functionally indistinguishable from private stalkers – conducting surveillance on homes and workplaces with no visible authority.

This is one of 13 skip-tracing contracts awarded by ICE in December 2025, collectively worth up to $1.2 billion over two years, targeting up to 1.5 million immigrants. The Blackwater-to-ICE pipeline connects the military-industrial complex to immigration enforcement – a pattern that extends across the surveillance-industrial complex. Other skip-tracing vendors include geo-group, capgemini-government-solutions, and sabot-consulting.

Sources

• The Intercept: Blackwater Successor Constellis Hunts Immigrants for ICE (Jan 2026)
• The Intercept: ICE Hires Immigrant Bounty Hunters From Private Prison Company GEO Group (Dec 2025)
• Jacobin: ICE Is Planning to Build a Bounty Hunter Army (Nov 2025)
• American Immigration Council: ICE’s Private Bounty Hunters Use AI to Track Immigrants