President Donald Trump made countering immigration one in every of his flagship points throughout final yr’s presidential marketing campaign, promising an unprecedented variety of deportations.
In his first eight months in workplace, that promise become round 350,000 deportations, a determine that features deportations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (round 200,000), Customs and Border Safety (greater than 132,000), and virtually 18,000 self-deportations, in response to CNN.
ICE has taken heart stage in Trump’s mass deportation marketing campaign, raiding properties, workplaces, and public parks seeking undocumented immigrants. To assist its efforts, the ICE has at its disposal a number of applied sciences able to figuring out and surveilling people and communities.
Here’s a recap of a few of the know-how that ICE has in its digital arsenal.
Clearview AI 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 out by 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 help its regulation enforcement arm Homeland Safety Investigations (HSI), “with capabilities of figuring out victims and offenders in youngster sexual exploitation circumstances and assaults towards regulation enforcement officers.”
In accordance with a authorities procurement database, the contract signed final week is value $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 value $1.1 million. The yr earlier than, ICE paid Clearview AI practically $800,000 for “facial recognition enterprise licenses.”
Clearview AI didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Contact Us
Do you’ve got extra details about ICE and the know-how it makes use of? We’d like to learn the way this impacts you. From a non-work machine, you possibly can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Sign at +1 917 257 1382, or through Telegram and Keybase @lorenzofb, or e mail. You can also contact TechCrunch through SecureDrop.
Paragon cellphone spy ware
In September 2024, ICE signed a contract value $2 million with Israeli spy ware maker Paragon Options. Nearly instantly, the Biden administration issued a “cease work order,” placing the contract below evaluate to ensure it complied with an government order on the federal government’s use of business spy ware.
Due to that order, for practically a yr, the contract remained in limbo. Then, final week, the Trump administration lifted the cease work order, successfully reactivating the contract.
At this level, it’s unclear what’s the standing of Paragon’s relationship with ICE in observe.
The data entry from final week stated that the contract with Parago is for “a totally configured proprietary resolution together with license, {hardware}, guarantee, upkeep, and coaching.” Virtually talking, until the {hardware} set up and coaching have been accomplished final yr, it could take a while for ICE to have Paragon’s system up and working.
It’s additionally unclear if the spy ware will probably be utilized by ICE or HSI, an company whose investigations should not restricted to immigration, but in addition cowl on-line youngster sexual exploitation, human trafficking, monetary fraud, and extra.
Paragon has lengthy tried to painting itself as an “moral” and accountable spy ware maker, and now has to resolve if it’s moral to work with Trump’s ICE. Lots has occurred to Paragon within the final yr. In December, American personal fairness big AE Industrial bought Paragon, with a plan to merge it with cybersecurity firm Pink Lattice, in response to Israeli tech information web site Calcalist.
In an indication that the merger could have taken place, when TechCrunch reached out to Paragon for touch upon the reactivation of the ICE contract final week, we have been referred to RedLattice’s new vice chairman of selling 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 couple of months, Paragon has been ensnared in a spy ware 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 businesses.
LexisNexis’ authorized and public data databases
For years, ICE has used the authorized analysis and public data information dealer LexisNexis to help 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 Middle. ICE used the software to verify the background data of migrants.
A yr later, The Intercept revealed that ICE was utilizing LexisNexis to detect suspicious exercise and examine migrants earlier than they even dedicated a criminal offense, a program {that a} critic stated enabled “mass surveillance.”
In accordance with public data, LexisNexis presently offers ICE “with a regulation enforcement investigative database subscription (LEIDS) which permits entry to public data and industrial information to help felony investigations.”
This yr, ICE has paid $4.7 million to subscribe to the service.
LexisNexis spokesperson Jennifer Richman instructed TechCrunch that ICE has used the corporate’s product “information and analytics options for many years, throughout a number of administrations.”
“Our dedication is to help the accountable and moral use of knowledge, in full compliance with legal guidelines and rules, 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 businesses throughout the USA to advance public security and safety.”
Surveillance big Palantir
Information analytics and surveillance know-how big Palantir has signed a number of contracts with ICE within the final yr. The largest contract, value $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 Palantir. The Peter Thiel-founded firm’s relationship with ICE dates again to the early 2010s.
Earlier this yr, 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 individuals based mostly on their immigration standing, bodily traits, felony affiliation, location information, and extra.
404 Media cited “a supply acquainted with the database,” who stated it’s made up of ‘tables upon tables’ of knowledge and that it may construct reviews that present, for instance, people who find themselves on a particular kind of visa who got here into the nation at a particular port of entry, who got here from a particular nation, and who’ve a particular hair shade (or any variety of a whole bunch of knowledge factors).”
The software, and Palantir’s relationship with ICE, was controversial sufficient that sources throughout the firm leaked to 404 Media an inside wiki the place Palantir justifies working with Trump’s ICE.
Palantir can be creating a software referred to as “ImmigrationOS,” in response to a contract value $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 individuals overstaying their visa, in response to a doc first reported on by Wired.
