President Donald Trump rebutted immigrants during last year's presidential election, pledging an unprecedented number of deportations.
According to CNN, in his first eight months, the promises have changed to figures that include around 350,000 deportations, immigration and customs enforcement (about 200,000), customs and border protection (over 132,000), and almost 18,000 self-reports.
ICE is on the centre stage with Trump's deportation campaign, raiding homes, workplaces and parks in search of undocumented immigrants. To support that effort, ICE is at willing to use several technologies that allow individuals and communities to be identified and monitored.
Below is a summary of some of the technologies that ICE has at Digital Arsenal.
ClearView AI Facial Recognition
ClearView AI is perhaps the most famous facial recognition company today. For years, the company had promised that it could identify faces by searching large databases of photographs scraped from the internet.
On Monday, 404 Media reported that ICE had signed a contract with the company to support the Law Enforcement Department's Homeland Security Investigation (HSI).
According to the government procurement database, the contract signed last week is worth $3.75 million.
ICE has signed other contracts with ClearView AI for the past few years. In September 2024, the agency purchased “Forensic Software” from the company. This is a transaction worth $1.1 million. The previous year, ICE paid a ClearView AI of nearly $800,000 for its “facial recognition enterprise license.”
ClearView AI did not respond to requests for comment.
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Paragon Phone Spyware
In September 2024, ICE signed a $2 million worth of contract with Israeli spyware manufacturer Paragon Solutions. Almost immediately, the Biden administration issued a “stop work order” and confirmed that it had complied with the government's executive order regarding the use of commercial spyware during its review of the contract.
Because of that order, the contract remained within range for almost a year. Then last week, the Trump administration lifted its suspension work order and effectively reactivated the contract.
At this point, it is unclear what the relationship between Paragon and ICE actually is.
Last week's record entry said the contract with Parago covers “a fully configured, proprietary solution that includes license, hardware, warranty, maintenance and training.” In fact, it can take some time for Ice to get your Paragon system to run, unless you have hardware installed and trained last year.
It is also unknown whether spyware will be used by ICE or HSI. HSI is an institution that does not limit investigations to immigration, but also covers online child sexual exploitation, human trafficking, financial fraud, and more.
Paragon has long tried to portray himself as a “ethical” and responsible spyware maker, but now he has to decide whether using Trump's ice is ethical or not. A lot happened to Paragon last year. In December, American Private Equity Giant Ae Industrial purchased Paragon, according to Israeli technology news site Calcalist.
Amidst the indication that a merger may have occurred, when TechCrunch contacted Paragon to comment on the revitalization of its ICE contract last week, we were introduced to Redlattice's new vice president of marketing and communications.
Redlattice's IRA also did not respond to requests for comments for this article or to requests for last week's article.
Over the past few months, Paragon has been caught up in a spyware scandal in Italy, with the government being accused of spying on journalists and immigration activists. In response, Paragon cut ties with the Italian intelligence agency.
LexisNexis Legal and Public Records Database
For years, ICE has been using legal investigations and public record data broker LexisNexis to support investigations.
In 2022, two nonprofit organizations obtained the document via the Freedom of Information Act Requests. This revealed that ICE had performed over 12 million searches over seven months using a tool called corceint Virtual Crime Center. ICE used the tool to check background information for immigrants.
A year later, Intercept revealed that ICE was using LexisNexis to detect suspicious activity and investigate immigrants. Critics even investigated immigration before programs that allowed “mass surveillance” committed crimes.
According to public records, LexisNexis currently offers ICE with Law Enforcement Investigation Database Subscription (LEIDS).
This year, ICE paid $4.7 million to subscribe to the service.
LexisNexis spokesman Jennifer Richman told TechCrunch that ICE uses the company's products.
“Our commitment is to support the responsible ethical use of data, fully complying with laws and regulations, and protecting all residents of the United States,” added LexisNexis, “we will partner with over 7,500 federal, state, local, tribal and territorial agencies across the United States to improve public safety and safety across the United States.”
Surveillance major Palantia
Data analysis and surveillance technology giant Palantir signed several contracts with ICE last year. The largest contract worth $18.5 million since September 2024 is for a database system called “Investigation Case Management” or ICM.
The ICM contract dates back to 2022, with Palantir signing a $95.9 million contract with Palantir. The relationship between the company founded in Peter Thiel and ice dates back to the early 2010s.
Earlier this year, 404 media outlets that extensively reported on Trump's deportation efforts, particularly technology that strengthens Palantir's relationship with ICE, revealed details on how the ICM database works. The Tech News site reported that it saw a recent version of the database. This allowed ICE to filter people based on immigration status, physical characteristics, criminal affiliation, location data, and more.
404 Media quoted “database-informed sources.” He said it consists of a “table” of data, and that he could produce reports showing people who come to a particular country at a particular port of entry and are on a certain type of visa who have come to the country at a particular port of entry and who have a particular hair color (or hundreds of data points).
The tool's relationship with Palantier with ice leaked an internal wiki that justifies Palantier working on Trump's ice, as sources within the company are leaking to 404 media.
Palantir is developing a tool called “immigrants,” according to a $30 million deal revealed by Business Insider.
Immigration is said to be designed to streamline “illegal foreigner choices and manipulation of anxiety,” lead to self-denial “near real-time visibility” and track people staying on visas.