President Donald Trump stated he would make countering immigration certainly one of his flagship insurance policies throughout his second time period within the White Home, promising an unprecedented variety of deportations.
A 12 months in, information exhibits that deportations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Safety have surpassed a minimum of 350,000 folks.
ICE has taken heart stage in Trump’s mass elimination marketing campaign, raiding houses, workplaces, and public parks in the hunt for undocumented folks, prompting widespread protests and resistance from communities throughout the USA.
ICE makes use of a number of applied sciences to establish and surveil people. Homeland Safety has additionally leveraged the shadow of Trump’s deportations to problem long-standing authorized norms, together with forcibly getting into houses to arrest folks with out a judicial warrant, a transfer that authorized consultants say violates the Fourth Modification protections in opposition to unreasonable searches and seizures.
Listed below are a number of the applied sciences that ICE is counting on.
Cell-site simulators
ICE has a know-how referred to as cell-site simulators to listen in on cellphones. These surveillance gadgets, because the identify suggests, are designed to look as a cellphone tower, tricking close by telephones into connecting to them. As soon as that occurs, the regulation enforcement authorities who’re utilizing the cell-site simulators can find and establish the telephones of their neighborhood, and probably intercept calls, textual content messages, and web visitors.
Cell-site simulators are often known as “stingrays,” based mostly on the model identify of one of many earliest variations of the know-how, which was made by U.S. protection contractor Harris (now L3Harris); or IMSI catchers, a know-how that may seize a close-by cellular phone’s distinctive identifier, which regulation enforcement can use for figuring out the cellphone’s proprietor.
Within the final two years, ICE has signed contracts for greater than $1.5 million with an organization referred to as TechOps Specialty Autos (TOSV), which produces custom-made vans for regulation enforcement.
A contract price greater than $800,000, dated Might 8, 2025, stated TOSV will present “Cell Web site Simulator (CSS) Autos to assist the Homeland Safety Technical Operations program.”
TOSV president Jon Brianas advised information.killnetswitch that the corporate doesn’t manufacture the cell-site simulators, however slightly integrates them “into our general design of the automobile.”
Cell-site simulators have lengthy been controversial for a number of causes.
These gadgets are designed to trick all close by telephones to connect with them, which implies that, by design, they collect the information of many harmless folks. Additionally, authorities have generally deployed them with out first acquiring a warrant.
Authorities have additionally tried to maintain their use of the know-how secret in court docket, withholding info and even accepting plea offers and dropping circumstances slightly than disclose details about their use of cell-site simulators. In a court docket case in 2019 in Baltimore, it was revealed that prosecutors had been instructed to drop circumstances slightly than violate a non-disclosure settlement with the corporate that makes the gadgets.
Facial recognition
Clearview AI is maybe probably the most well-known facial-recognition firm as we speak. For years, the corporate promised to have the ability to establish any face by looking by means of a big database of photographs it had scraped from the web.
On Monday, 404 Media reported that ICE has signed a contract with the corporate to assist its regulation enforcement arm, Homeland Safety Investigations (HSI), “with capabilities of figuring out victims and offenders in little one sexual exploitation circumstances and assaults in opposition to regulation enforcement officers.”
In keeping with a authorities procurement database, the contract signed final week is price $3.75 million.
ICE has had different contracts with Clearview AI within the final couple of years. In September 2024, the company bought “forensic software program” from the corporate, a deal price $1.1 million. The 12 months earlier than, ICE paid Clearview AI practically $800,000 for “facial recognition enterprise licenses.”
Clearview AI didn’t reply to a request for remark.
ICE can also be utilizing a facial-recognition app referred to as Cellular Fortify, which federal brokers use to establish folks on the road. The app depends on scanning an individual’s driver’s license photograph in opposition to 200 million photographs, a lot of the information sourced from state driver’s license databases.
Paragon cellphone spyware and adware
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In September 2024, ICE signed a contract price $2 million with Israeli spyware and adware maker Paragon Options. Virtually instantly, the Biden administration issued a “cease work order,” placing the contract beneath overview to verify it complied with an govt order on the federal government’s use of economic spyware and adware.
Due to that order, for practically a 12 months, the contract remained in limbo. Then, final week, the Trump administration lifted the stop-work order, successfully reactivating the contract.
At this level, the standing of Paragon’s relationship with ICE in apply is unclear.
The data entry from final week stated that the contract with Paragon is for “a completely configured proprietary answer together with license, {hardware}, guarantee, upkeep, and coaching.” Virtually talking, except the {hardware} set up and coaching had been achieved final 12 months, it could take a while for ICE to have Paragon’s system up and operating.
It’s additionally unclear if the spyware and adware might be utilized by ICE or HSI, an company whose investigations aren’t restricted to immigration, but in addition cowl on-line little one sexual exploitation, human trafficking, monetary fraud, and extra.
Paragon has lengthy tried to painting itself as an “moral” and accountable spyware and adware maker, and now has to determine if it’s moral to work with Trump’s ICE. So much has occurred to Paragon within the final 12 months. In December, American personal fairness big AE Industrial bought Paragon, with a plan to merge it with cybersecurity firm RedLattice, in response to Israeli tech information web site Calcalist.
In an indication that the merger might have taken place, when information.killnetswitch reached out to Paragon for touch upon the reactivation of the ICE contract final week, we had been referred to RedLattice’s new vice chairman of promoting and communications, Jennifer Iras.
RedLattice’s Iras didn’t reply to a request for remark for this text, nor for final week’s article.
In the previous few months, Paragon has been ensnared in a spyware and adware scandal in Italy, the place the federal government has been accused of spying on journalists and immigration activists. In response, Paragon reduce ties with Italy’s intelligence companies.
Telephone hacking and unlocking know-how
In mid-September, ICE’s regulation enforcement arm, Homeland Safety Investigations, signed a contract with Magnet Forensics for $3 million.
This contract is particularly for software program licenses in order that HSI brokers can “get better digital proof, course of a number of gadgets,” and “generate forensic reviews,” in response to the contract description.
Magnet is the present maker of the cellphone hacking and unlocking gadgets referred to as Graykey. These gadgets primarily give regulation enforcement brokers the flexibility to attach a locked cellphone to them, unlock it, and entry the information inside it.
Magnet Forensics, which merged with Graykey maker Grayshift in 2023, didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Cellphone location information
On the finish of September, 404 Media reported that ICE purchased entry to an “all-in-one” surveillance software that enables the company to look by means of databases of historic cellphone location information, in addition to social media info.
The software seems to be manufactured from two merchandise referred to as Tangles and Webloc, that are made by an organization referred to as Penlink. One of many instruments guarantees to leverage “a proprietary information platform to compile, course of, and validate billions of every day location alerts from a whole lot of hundreds of thousands of cellular gadgets, offering each forensic and predictive analytics,” in response to a redacted contract discovered by 404 Media.
The redacted contract doesn’t establish which one of many instruments makes that promise, however given its description, it’s probably Webloc. Forbes beforehand cited a case examine that stated Webloc can search a given location to “monitor tendencies of cellular gadgets which have given information at these areas and the way usually they’ve been there.”
Any such cellphone location information is harvested by corporations world wide utilizing software program growth kits (SDKs) embedded in common smartphone apps, or with an internet promoting course of referred to as real-time bidding (RTB), the place corporations bid in real-time to position an advert on the display of a cellphone person based mostly on their demographic or location information. The latter course of has the by-product of giving advert tech corporations that form of private information.
As soon as collected, this mass of location information is transferred to a knowledge dealer who then sells it to authorities companies. Because of this layered course of, authorities have used the sort of information with out getting a warrant by merely buying entry to the information.
The opposite software, Tangles, is an “AI-powered open-source intelligence” software that automates “the search and evaluation of information from the open, deep, and the darkish net,” in response to Penlink’s official web site.
Forbes reported in September that ICE spent $5 million on Penlink’s two instruments.
Penlink didn’t reply to a request for remark.
License plate readers
ICE depends on automated license plate reader (ALPR) corporations to comply with drivers throughout a big swath of the U.S., noting the place folks go and when.
ICE additionally leans on its connections with native regulation enforcement companies, which have contracts with ALPR suppliers, like surveillance firm Flock Security, to acquire immigration information by the again door. Flock is likely one of the largest ALPR suppliers, with over 40,000 license plate scanners round the USA, and solely getting bigger with its partnerships with different corporations, comparable to video surveillance firm Ring.
Efforts by ICE to informally request information from native regulation enforcement have prompted some police departments to chop off federal companies from their entry.
Border Patrol runs its personal surveillance community of ALPR cameras, the Related Press reported.
LexisNexis’ authorized and public data databases
For years, ICE has used the authorized analysis and public data information dealer LexisNexis to assist its investigations.
In 2022, two non-profits obtained paperwork through Freedom of Data Act requests, which revealed that ICE carried out greater than 1.2 million searches over seven months utilizing a software referred to as Accurint Digital Crime Heart. ICE used the software to test the background info of migrants.
A 12 months later, The Intercept revealed that ICE was utilizing LexisNexis to detect suspicious exercise and examine migrants earlier than they even dedicated a crime, a program {that a} critic stated enabled “mass surveillance.”
In keeping with public data, LexisNexis at the moment supplies ICE “with a regulation enforcement investigative database subscription (LEIDS) which permits entry to public data and industrial information to assist prison investigations.”
This 12 months, ICE has paid $4.7 million to subscribe to the service.
LexisNexis spokesperson Jennifer Richman advised information.killnetswitch that ICE has used the corporate’s product “information and analytics options for many years, throughout a number of administrations.”
“Our dedication is to assist the accountable and moral use of information, in full compliance with legal guidelines and laws, and for the safety of all residents of the USA,” stated Richman, who added that LexisNexis “companions with greater than 7,500 federal, state, native, tribal, and territorial companies throughout the USA to advance public security and security.”
Surveillance big Palantir
Data analytics and surveillance know-how big Palantir has signed a number of contracts with ICE within the final 12 months. The largest contract, price $18.5 million from September 2024, is for a database system referred to as “Investigative Case Administration,” or ICM.
The contract for ICM goes again to 2022, when Palantir signed a $95.9 million cope with ICE. The Peter Thiel-founded firm’s relationship with ICE dates again to the early 2010s.
Earlier this 12 months, 404 Media, which has reported extensively on the know-how powering Trump’s deportation efforts, and notably Palantir’s relationship with ICE, revealed particulars of how the ICM database works. The tech information web site reported that it noticed a latest model of the database, which permits ICE to filter folks based mostly on their immigration standing, bodily traits, prison affiliation, location information, and extra.
In keeping with 404 Media, “a supply acquainted with the database” stated it’s made up of ‘tables upon tables’ of information and that it could possibly construct reviews that present, for instance, people who find themselves on a selected kind of visa who got here into the nation at a selected port of entry, who got here from a selected nation, and who’ve a selected hair colour (or any variety of a whole lot of information factors).”
The software, and Palantir’s relationship with ICE, was controversial sufficient that sources inside the firm leaked to 404 Media an inner wiki the place Palantir justifies working with Trump’s ICE.
Palantir can also be creating a software referred to as “ImmigrationOS,” in response to a contract price $30 million revealed by Enterprise Insider.
ImmigrationOS is alleged to be designed to streamline the “choice and apprehension operations of unlawful aliens,” give “close to real-time visibility” into self-deportations, and monitor folks overstaying their visa, in response to a doc first reported on by Wired.
First revealed on September 13, 2025, and up to date on September 18, 2025, to incorporate Magnet Forensics’ new contract, once more on October 8, 2025, to incorporate cell-site simulators and site information, and once more on January 26, 2026, to incorporate license plate readers.
