President Donald Trump made countering immigration certainly one 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 changed into 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, according to CNN.
ICE has taken heart stage in Trump’s mass deportation marketing campaign, raiding houses, workplaces, and public parks in the hunt for undocumented immigrants. To help 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 among the know-how that ICE has in its digital arsenal.
Clearview AI facial recognition
Clearview AI is maybe essentially the most well-known facial recognition firm in the present day. For years, the corporate promised to have the ability to establish any face by looking by means of a big database of images 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 baby sexual exploitation circumstances and assaults towards regulation enforcement officers.”
In line with a authorities procurement database, the contract signed final week is price $3.75 million.
ICE has had other contracts with Clearview AI within the final couple of years. In September 2024, the company bought “forensic software program” from the corporate, a deal price $1.1 million. The yr earlier than, ICE paid Clearview AI almost $800,000 for “facial recognition enterprise licenses.”
Clearview AI didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Contact Us
Do you may have extra details about ICE and the know-how it makes use of? We might like to learn the way this impacts you. From a non-work gadget, you possibly can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Sign at +1 917 257 1382, or by way of Telegram and Keybase @lorenzofb, or e mail. You can also contact TechCrunch by way of SecureDrop.
Paragon telephone spyware and adware
In September 2024, ICE signed a contract price $2 million with Israeli spyware and adware maker Paragon Options. Virtually instantly, the Biden administration issued a “cease work order,” putting the contract under review to verify it complied with an government order on the federal government’s use of business spyware and adware.
Due to that order, for almost 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 completely configured proprietary resolution together with license, {hardware}, guarantee, upkeep, and coaching.” Virtually talking, until the {hardware} set up and coaching had been achieved final yr, it could take a while for ICE to have Paragon’s system up and working.
It’s additionally unclear if the spyware and adware might be utilized by ICE or HSI, an company whose investigations should not restricted to immigration, but additionally cowl on-line baby sexual exploitation, human trafficking, monetary fraud, and more.
Paragon has lengthy tried to painting itself as an “moral” and accountable spyware and adware maker, and now has to determine if it’s moral to work with Trump’s ICE. Quite a bit has occurred to Paragon within the final yr. In December, American non-public fairness large AE Industrial bought Paragon, with a plan to merge it with cybersecurity firm Purple Lattice, in keeping with Israeli tech information website Calcalist.
In an indication that the merger might have taken place, when TechCrunch reached out to Paragon for touch upon the reactivation of the ICE contract final week, we had been referred to RedLattice’s new vice chairman of promoting 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 spyware and adware scandal in Italy, the place the federal government has been accused of spying on journalists and immigration activists. In response, Paragon lower ties with Italy’s intelligence companies.
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 by way of Freedom of Info Act requests, which revealed that ICE carried out greater than 1.2 million searches over seven months utilizing a instrument referred to as Accurint Digital Crime Middle. ICE used the instrument 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.”
According to public records, LexisNexis at the moment offers ICE “with a regulation enforcement investigative database subscription (LEIDS) which permits entry to public data and business information to help legal investigations.”
This yr, ICE has paid $4.7 million to subscribe to the service.
LexisNexis spokesperson Jennifer Richman advised 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 america,” stated Richman, who added that LexisNexis “companions with greater than 7,500 federal, state, native, tribal, and territorial companies throughout america to advance public security and safety.”
Surveillance large Palantir
Knowledge analytics and surveillance know-how large Palantir has signed several contracts with ICE within the final yr. The most important contract, price $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 particularly Palantir’s relationship with ICE, revealed particulars of how the ICM database works. The tech information website reported that it noticed a latest model of the database, which permits ICE to filter folks primarily based on their immigration standing, bodily traits, legal affiliation, location information, and extra.
404 Media cited “a supply accustomed to the database,” who stated it’s made up of ‘tables upon tables’ of knowledge and that it may well construct studies that present, for instance, people who find themselves on a selected kind of visa who got here into the nation at a selected port of entry, who got here from a selected nation, and who’ve a selected hair colour (or any variety of tons of of knowledge factors).”
The instrument, and Palantir’s relationship with ICE, was controversial sufficient that sources throughout the firm leaked to 404 Media an internal wiki the place Palantir justifies working with Trump’s ICE.
Palantir can be growing a instrument referred to as “ImmigrationOS,” in keeping with a contract price $30 million revealed by Business Insider.
ImmigrationOS is claimed to be designed to streamline the “choice and apprehension operations of unlawful aliens,” give “close to real-time visibility” into self-deportations, and monitor folks overstaying their visa, in keeping with a document first reported on by Wired.
