President Donald Trump made countering immigration one of his flagship issues during his presidential campaign, promising an unprecedented number of deportations. In his first eight months in office, that promise resulted in around 350,000 deportations. This figure includes deportations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which accounted for around 200,000, and more than 132,000 by Customs and Border Protection. It also includes almost 18,000 self-deportations.
ICE has taken center stage in this mass deportation campaign, conducting raids in homes, workplaces, and public parks to find undocumented immigrants. To aid its efforts, the agency employs several advanced technologies capable of identifying and surveilling individuals and communities.
Clearview AI is perhaps the most well-known facial recognition company today. For years, it has promised to identify any face by searching a massive database of photos scraped from the internet. Reports indicate that ICE has signed a new contract with the company to support its Homeland Security Investigations arm. The contract is intended to help identify victims and offenders in child sexual exploitation cases and assaults against law enforcement officers. According to a government procurement database, this new contract is worth $3.75 million. ICE has had previous contracts with Clearview AI, including a $1.1 million deal for forensic software in September 2024 and an earlier deal for nearly $800,000 worth of facial recognition enterprise licenses.
In September 2024, ICE also signed a $2 million contract with the Israeli spyware maker Paragon Solutions. Almost immediately, the Biden administration issued a stop work order to review the contract for compliance with an executive order on commercial spyware use. The contract remained in limbo for nearly a year until the Trump administration recently lifted the order, effectively reactivating it.
The contract is for a fully configured proprietary solution including license, hardware, warranty, maintenance, and training. It is unclear whether the system is currently operational or if the spyware will be used by ICE or HSI, whose investigations also cover areas like online child exploitation, human trafficking, and financial fraud.
Paragon has tried to portray itself as an ethical spyware maker. In the last year, the company was purchased by an American private equity giant and may have merged with a cybersecurity firm. Paragon has also been involved in a spyware scandal in Italy, where the government was accused of spying on journalists and immigration activists, leading the company to cut ties with Italian intelligence agencies.
For years, ICE has used the legal research and public records data broker LexisNexis to support its investigations. Documents obtained in 2022 revealed that ICE performed over 1.2 million searches in a seven-month period using a tool called Accurint Virtual Crime Center to check the background information of migrants. A later report revealed ICE was using LexisNexis to detect suspicious activity and investigate migrants before any crime was committed, a program critics called mass surveillance.
Public records show that LexisNexis currently provides ICE with a law enforcement investigative database subscription which allows access to public records and commercial data. This year, ICE has paid $4.7 million to subscribe to the service. A LexisNexis spokesperson stated that the company supports the responsible and ethical use of data in compliance with laws and for the protection of all US residents.
The data analytics and surveillance technology giant Palantir has signed several contracts with ICE in the last year. The largest, worth $18.5 million from September 2024, is for a database system called Investigative Case Management, or ICM. This system allows ICE to filter people based on immigration status, physical characteristics, criminal affiliation, location data, and many other data points. It can build detailed reports from hundreds of data points.
Palantir’s relationship with ICE dates back to the early 2010s. The company is also developing a new tool called ImmigrationOS under a contract worth $30 million. This tool is designed to streamline the selection and apprehension operations of undocumented immigrants, provide visibility into self-deportations, and track people overstaying their visas.