Subtitle: From Facial Recognition to Spyware, ICE Leverages Advanced Tools to Enhance Immigration Enforcement

President Donald Trump made countering immigration one of his flagship issues during last year’s presidential campaign, promising an unprecedented number of deportations. In his first eight months in office, that promise turned into around 350,000 deportations, a figure that includes deportations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (around 200,000), Customs and Border Protection (more than 132,000), and almost 18,000 self-deportations, according to CNN. ICE has taken center stage in Trump’s mass deportation campaign, raiding homes, workplaces, and public parks in search of undocumented immigrants. To aid its efforts, ICE has at its disposal several technologies capable of identifying and surveilling individuals and communities.

Clearview AI, a prominent facial recognition company, has signed a contract with ICE to support its law enforcement arm, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), with capabilities of identifying victims and offenders in child sexual exploitation cases and assaults against law enforcement officers. According to a government procurement database, the contract signed last week is worth $3.75 million. ICE has had other contracts with Clearview AI in the last couple of years, including a $1.1 million deal for forensic software in September 2024 and an $800,000 deal for facial recognition enterprise licenses the year before. Clearview AI, known for its vast database of over 20 billion facial images scraped from the internet, has faced significant scrutiny over privacy and ethical concerns, but it has not responded to requests for comment on its relationship with ICE.

In September 2024, ICE signed a contract worth $2 million with Israeli spyware maker Paragon Solutions. However, the Biden administration issued a “stop work order,” putting the contract under review to ensure compliance with an executive order on the government’s use of commercial spyware. The Trump administration later lifted the stop work order, reactivating the contract. The status of Paragon’s relationship with ICE remains unclear, as it may take time for the system to be up and running. It is also unclear if the spyware will be used by ICE or HSI, an agency whose investigations cover a range of issues beyond immigration, including online child sexual exploitation, human trafficking, and financial fraud. Paragon, which has faced controversy in Italy over allegations of spying on journalists and immigration activists, cut ties with Italian intelligence agencies in response. Paragon was recently acquired by American private equity firm AE Industrial, which plans to merge it with cybersecurity company Red Lattice.

ICE has long used the legal research and public records data broker LexisNexis to support its investigations. In 2022, documents obtained via Freedom of Information Act requests revealed that ICE performed more than 1.2 million searches over seven months using a tool called Accurint Virtual Crime Center. ICE used the tool to check the background information of migrants. This year, ICE has paid $4.7 million to subscribe to LexisNexis’ law enforcement investigative database subscription (LEIDS), which allows access to public records and commercial data to support criminal investigations. LexisNexis spokesperson Jennifer Richman stated that ICE has used the company’s product “data and analytics solutions for decades, across several administrations,” and emphasized their commitment to the responsible and ethical use of data in compliance with laws and regulations.

Data analytics and surveillance technology giant Palantir has signed several contracts with ICE in the last year. The biggest contract, worth $18.5 million from September 2024, is for a database system called “Investigative Case Management,” or ICM. The contract for ICM goes back to 2022, when Palantir signed a $95.9 million deal with ICE. Palantir’s relationship with ICE dates back to the early 2010s. Earlier this year, 404 Media revealed details of how the ICM database works, allowing ICE to filter people based on their immigration status, physical characteristics, criminal affiliation, location data, and more. According to a source familiar with the database, it is made up of “tables upon tables” of data and can build reports that show, for example, people on a specific type of visa who came into the country at a specific port of entry, from a specific country, and with a specific hair color (or any number of hundreds of data points).

Palantir is also developing a tool called “ImmigrationOS,” according to a contract worth $30 million revealed by Business Insider. ImmigrationOS is said to be designed to streamline the “selection and apprehension operations of illegal aliens,” give “near real-time visibility” into self-deportations, and track people overstaying their visa. According to a document first reported on by Wired, the tool is intended to provide ICE with a more comprehensive and efficient approach to immigration enforcement. The tool, and Palantir’s relationship with ICE, was controversial enough that sources within the company leaked to 404 Media an internal wiki where Palantir justifies working with Trump’s ICE.

As ICE continues to expand its use of advanced technologies, concerns over privacy, surveillance, and the ethical implications of these tools have grown. Critics argue that the use of such technologies enables mass surveillance and undermines civil liberties, while supporters contend that they are essential tools for law enforcement in the fight against crime and illegal immigration.