U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement paid $825,000 earlier this year to a company that manufactures vehicles equipped with various technologies for law enforcement. These technologies include fake cellphone towers known as cell-site simulators, which can be used to spy on nearby phones. According to public records, the award dated May 8 provides cell site simulator vehicles to support the Homeland Security Technical Operations program and is a modification for additional such vehicles.
The contract was signed with TechOps Specialty Vehicles, a Maryland-based company. This company also signed a similar contract with ICE in September 2024 for $818,000, showing that the relationship between the agency and the company predates the Trump administration. The president of TechOps Specialty Vehicles, Jon Brianas, stated in an email that he could not provide details about the ICE contracts and the vehicles, citing trade secrets. Brianas confirmed that the company does provide cell-site simulators but does not manufacture them. He explained that the company integrates electrical, communications, and technology components into its overall vehicle design, though he declined to say where the company sources its cell-site simulators.
This federal contract is the latest to reveal some of the technologies powering the Trump administration’s deportation crackdown. In early September, a recently unsealed search warrant showed that ICE used a cell-site simulator to track down a person who was allegedly part of a criminal gang in the United States and had been ordered to leave the country in 2023. A separate report also found a contract for cell site simulator vehicles, though it did not name the company providing the vans.
Cell-site simulators are also known as stingrays, a name that comes from earlier types of these devices made by a defense contractor. Stingrays have become a catch-all name for this type of technology, also known as IMSI catchers. IMSI stands for International Mobile Subscriber Identity, a unique number that identifies every cellphone user in the world. As the name suggests, cell-site simulator tools mimic a cellphone tower, tricking every phone in its nearby range to connect to the device. This gives law enforcement the ability to better identify the real-world location of those phones and their owners. Some cell-site simulators can also intercept regular calls, text messages, and internet traffic.
Authorities can get data from traditional cellphone towers to find the current or past location of a suspect, but the location is usually not very precise. Stingray-like devices have been in use by law enforcement for more than a decade and have long been controversial. Critics point out that authorities do not always get a warrant for their use and that these devices ensnare innocent people by default. These devices are also shrouded in secrecy, as the law enforcement agencies using them are under strict non-disclosure agreements not to reveal how the devices work.
ICE has a long history of using cell-site simulators. Documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union in 2020 showed that ICE deployed them at least 466 times between 2017 and 2019. According to other documents, the agency used these tools more than 1,885 times between 2013 and 2017. ICE acknowledged a request for comment but did not respond to a series of questions. These questions included what ICE uses these vehicles for, whether and where they have recently been deployed, and whether the agency always gets a warrant when using cell-site simulators.
Headquartered just outside of Washington D.C., TechOps Specialty Vehicles sells a wide range of customizable vehicles to law enforcement. These include vans for SWAT armed response teams, bomb squads, and so-called mobile lab and cover surveillance vehicles. Among these projects are DHS Mobile Forensic Labs, referring to the Department of Homeland Security. According to the company website, these mobile forensic vans are equipped for on-site forensic analysis and documentation, have secure compartments for evidence preservation, and enable seamless case file updates.
Another project is the DHS Mobile Command Van, which the company says is configurable for advanced surveillance and mission coordination. It is unclear if these vans are the same vehicles that include cell-site simulators, as there is no mention of the phone surveillance tool on the company website. ICE has other contracts with the company for mobile forensic labs, which do not specify what technologies are located in the vans. According to its website, the company also sells bookmobiles, which appear to be libraries on wheels, as well as medical and fire department vehicles.