French tech giant Capgemini announced on Sunday that it will immediately divest from its American subsidiary Capgemini Government Solutions, following mounting scrutiny over the company’s ties with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Capgemini was designated as the lead contractor of a new ICE surveillance program for “skip-tracing” immigrants. Skip-tracing is a method often used by debt collectors to locate people who are difficult to find, and it has not been used by ICE before.
As part of the new program, ICE enlisted a handful of nongovernment entities to track down 50,000 immigrants a month, first by identifying where they live and work through “all technology systems available,” and then confirming through “physical, in-person surveillance,” including photographing, according to the Washington Post. The agency awarded contracts to ten companies in December. As part of the contract, the companies could earn more than $1 billion by the end of next year, according to The Intercept.
The highest potential bounty of $365 million over two years would go to Capgemini Government Solutions, European tech giant Capgemini’s U.S. subsidiary. Capgemini Government Solutions has been working with the Department of Homeland Security for more than 15 years, according to Capgemini CEO Aiman Ezzat.
As ICE escalates its violent immigration crackdown, protesters have started targeting companies that help turbocharge those efforts. Anti-ICE protesters are organizing nationwide general strikes and boycotts, while hundreds of tech workers have signed a letter asking their companies to cancel all contracts with ICE. Even Italians have organized protests as ICE agents descend upon Milan for the Winter Olympics. The French are no strangers to anti-ICE sentiment, too.
Following the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by ICE agents in Minneapolis last month, scrutiny of Capgemini’s work with the DHS mounted in France. Union workers and government officials, including the French minister of the economy Roland Lescure, demanded that the company review its contracts with the American government.
An independent board of directors began reviewing the contract last week, Ezzat said.
“We were recently made aware, through public sources, of the nature of a contract awarded to CGS by DHS’ Immigration and Customs Enforcement in December 2025. The nature and scope of this work has raised questions compared to what we typically do as a business and technology firm,” the chief executive said in a LinkedIn post last Sunday.
A week later, the review concluded that ” the customary legal restrictions imposed for contracting with federal government entities carrying out classified activities in the United States did not allow the Group to exercise appropriate control over certain aspects of the operations of this subsidiary to ensure alignment with the Group’s objectives,” Capgemini said in a press release.
The divestment decision arrives amid a tense geopolitical situation between France and the United States. There has been deep-seated resentment amongst Europeans of the Trump administration’s actions since taking office last year. Early last year, French citizens organized boycotts of Tesla due to CEO Elon Musk’s close ties to the administration, including some brands that are just heavily associated with an American identity, like Coca-Cola and McDonald’s.
As Trump escalates his tariff threats on the bloc, French officials have aimed to restrict the use of some American technology in government spaces to ease the country’s reliance on the U.S. They have also repeatedly and openly asked the European Union to take a stronger stance against Trump’s tariff threats, including by unleashing the Union’s “trade bazooka” that could allow restrictions on digital services companies like Meta and Google.
Source: gizmodo.com
