French Firm to Sell Division That Helps ICE Track Immigrants
Capgemini announces move after criticism of contract to identify and find immigrants in U.S.
Feb. 1, 2026 8:02 am ET
Capgemini CEO Aiman Ezzat says he only found out about the contract recently from public sources. Benoit Tessier/Reuters
Quick Summary
- Capgemini, a French IT company, will sell its U.S. government consulting division after scrutiny over a $365 million ICE contract. View more
PARIS—A French consulting and information-technology company has decided to sell a division that does business with ICE, after it emerged that the company has a contract with the agency to help track immigrants.
Paris-based Capgemini CAP 2.62%increase; green up pointing triangle said it would sell a division that provides consulting services to government agencies in the U.S. The move came days after Multinationals Observatory, a nonprofit, highlighted a number of contracts the company has with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, including one worth $365 million to identify and find immigrants in the U.S.
The decision signals growing concern from Western governments and companies about the Trump administration’s immigration policies, after federal immigration officials shot and killed two people in Minnesota last month. French ministers last week said Capgemini should disclose what it is doing for ICE.
“I ask Capgemini to shed light in a very transparent manner on its activities, on this policy and without a doubt to question the nature of its activities,” Economy Minister Roland Lescure said.
The $365 million contract is for “skip tracing,” a process of finding a person using online information and other sources.
Capgemini Chief Executive Aiman Ezzat last week said that he found out about the contract only recently from public sources; the U.S. division, he said, operates autonomously because of U.S. requirements to protect classified information. The division accounts for around 0.4% of the company’s global revenue, Capgemini said.
“The nature and scope of this work has raised questions compared to what we typically do as a business and technology firm,” Ezzat said.
In announcing the sale, Capgemini said “customary legal restrictions” for carrying out classified activities in the U.S. “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.”
The sale comes after the French government took a step to distance itself from U.S. tech companies: forbidding government agencies from using U.S. videoconferencing services such as Zoom or Microsoft’s Teams. Instead, French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said, agencies should use an application called Visio developed by the French government.
“It is necessary to deploy a single videoconference solution, controlled by the state, based on sovereign technologies,” Lecornu wrote in a note to government agencies.
Copyright ©2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Appeared in the February 2, 2026, print edition as ‘French Firm to Cut ICE-Linked Unit’.
Matthew Dalton is a reporter in The Wall Street Journal’s Paris bureau where he covers climate change, energy security and European politics and foreign policy.
Before moving to Paris, Matthew was a reporter in the Journal’s Brussels bureau for seven years.
View this Wall Street Journal article CLICK HERE
Media Air Base, LLC 
Leave a comment