French MPs demand explanation over tech firm’s contract to help ICE in US

French lawmakers have demanded an explanation after one of the country’s biggest tech companies signed a multimillion dollar contract to help the US enforcement agency ICE trace and expel migrants.The revelation that a subsidiary of Capgemini, a multinational digital services firm listed on the Paris stock exchange, had agreed to provide “skip tracing” – a technique for locating targeted people – with big bonuses if successful, has provoked outrage in France.Ministers and MPs are calling for more transparency over contracts that could breach human rights. ICE is facing an intense backlash after its agents shot dead two US citizens in Minnesota this month.Capgemini admitted that its US subsidiary, Capgemini Group Solutions (CGS), had signed a contract with ICE in December but said it had not yet come into effect.The website Observatoire des Multinationales, a corporate watchdog, revealed that CGS had agreed a $4.8m deal with ICE’s Detention Compliance and Removals office for “investigation and personal background check services”. The document states that CGS will provide “skip tracing services for enforcement and removal operations” with bonuses of up to $365m for successfully identifying and localising foreigners.France’s armed forces minister, Catherine Vautrin, said: “The contracts of French groups deserve close scrutiny,” adding: “Respect for human rights is an issue.”Hadrien Clouet, an MP with the leftwing party La France Insoumise, said: “It’s time for France to accept its responsibilities. French private companies are collaborating with ICE. We do not accept this.”The economy minister Roland Lescure told the National Assembly he had urged Capgemini to “shed light in a highly transparent manner on its activities … and surely question the nature of these activities”.Capgemini, founded in 1967, has 350,000 employers around the world. Research of publicly available documents shows it has 13 current contracts with ICE. One of these involves managing a hotline for victims of crimes committed by foreigners.A page on the company’s website, since removed, stated it was working “closely” with ICE’s deportation operations to reduce expulsion delays and costs. Observatoire des Multinationales published a screenshot in which Capgemini boasts of its role in “enforcement and removal operations” for ICE.It reads: “Capgemini leveraged supply chain best practices to help ERO (Enforcement and Removal Operations) become more efficient … the team from Capgemini is working closely with ERO to help it minimize the time required and the cost incurred to remove all removable illegal aliens from the US.”The CGT union at Capgemini has called for an immediate halt of all collaboration with ICE. “These partnerships are not only contrary to the values espoused by Capgemini but they make our group an active accomplice in serious human rights violations,” a union spokesperson said.In an email sent to Capgemini employees, the company executive Mathieu Dougados accepted that the ICE contract raised “legitimate questions” but said the Paris company had only recently become aware of the nature of the contract and was unable to obtain details of CGS’s technical operations “in accordance with US regulations”.“At this stage, the contract is not being executed because it is the subject of an appeal,” he wrote.Lescure said he had been in touch with Capgemini to express his concerns and told the company its explanations were “not good enough”. “I urge Capgemini to shed light in an extremely transparent manner on its activities and this policy, and to question the nature of these activities,” he said.