U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) paid $825,000 earlier this year to a company that manufactures vehicles with a variety of technology for law enforcement, including a fake cell phone tower known as “Cell-Site Simulators.”
According to public records, the award dated May 8th was “Providing Cell Site Simulator (CSS) vehicles to support the Technical Operations Program for Homeland Security,” and is a change to “additional CSS vehicles.”
The agreement was signed with Techops Specialty Vehicles (TOSV), a Maryland-based company. TOSV also signed a similar agreement with ICE for $818,000 in September 2024, indicating the agency-company relationship that pre-Trump administration.
TOSV president John Brianas told TechCrunch via email that he could not provide details about the ICE contract and vehicle, citing “trade secrets.” However, Brianas has confirmed that the company offers cell site simulators, but it doesn't create them.
“We don't manufacture any electrical, communications or technical components. We'll integrate that product into the overall design of the vehicle,” he refused to say from where TOSV sources its cell site simulator.
This is the latest federal contract that reveals some of the technologies that will empower the Trump administration's deportation crackdown.
In early September, Forbes discovered a recently unsealed search warrant that showed ICE was using a cell site simulator to track down people ordered to leave the country in 2023. Forbes also reported that he found a contract for the “Celsite Simulator Vehicle,” but the article did not honor the bank.
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The cell site simulator is also used as the name “Stingrays”. Because some of the previous types of these devices, created by defense contractor Harris (now L3Harris), were named as such. Since then, Stingrays has become the catch-all name for this type of technology, also known as IMSI catchers. (IMSI stands for International Mobile Subscriber ID, a unique number that identifies all mobile phone users in the world.)
As the name suggests, the cell site simulator tool mimics a mobile phone tower, allowing nearby phones to dig all phones in range and connect to devices, thus giving law enforcement the ability to better identify those phones and their owners' real locations.
Some cell site simulators can also intercept periodic calls, text messages, and internet traffic.
Authorities can retrieve data from traditional mobile phone towers to find the suspect's current or past location, but the location is usually less accurate.
Devices like Stingray have been used by law enforcement for over a decade and have long been controversial as authorities don't always get warrants to use them, and critics say these devices seduce innocent people by default. These devices are also hidden in secret. Because the law enforcement agencies that use them are under strict non-nondisclosure agreements to avoid revealing how the devices work.
ICE has a long history of using cell site simulators. In 2020, documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union showed that ICE deployed them at least 466 times between 2017 and 2019. According to documents obtained by BuzzFeed News at the time, the agency used these tools more than 1,885 times between 2013 and 2017.
ICE granted TechCrunch's request for comment, but did not respond to a series of questions including what these vehicles use, where and where they have recently been deployed, and whether the agency will always obtain a warrant when using the cell site simulator.
From surveillance vans to bookmobiles
Headquartered just outside of Washington, DC, TOSV sells a wide range of customizable vehicles to law enforcement, including SWAT armed response teams, bomb squads, so-called “mobile labs” and “cover surveillance” vehicles vans.
Of these vehicles for police, TOSV lists several “projects” including what is called the DHS Mobile Forensic Lab, which refers to the Department of Homeland Security.
According to the website, these mobile forensic vans are “equipped for on-site forensic analysis and documentation, have a “safe compartment of evidence storage and investigation tools” and enable “seamless case file updates and evidence record.”
Another project is the DHS Mobile Command Van,” says TOSV “configurable for advanced monitoring and mission coordination.”
It is unclear whether these vans are the same vehicles that contain cell site simulators, as none of the phone monitoring tools are mentioned anywhere on the TOSV website.
ICE has other agreements with TOSV for Mobile Forensic Labs, which does not specify which technology the van has.
According to its website, TOSV also sells what is called “bookmobiles.” This looks like a library of wheels, medical and fire station vehicles.