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 became 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 nearly 18,000 self-deportations, in keeping with CNN.
ICE has taken heart stage in Trump’s mass deportation marketing campaign, raiding houses, workplaces, and public parks in quest of 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 a number 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 right this moment. For years, the corporate promised to have the ability to establish any face by looking out via 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 in opposition to regulation enforcement officers.”
In response to a authorities procurement database, the contract signed final week is price $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 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.
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Paragon telephone adware
In September 2024, ICE signed a contract price $2 million with Israeli adware maker Paragon Options. Virtually instantly, the Biden administration issued a “cease work order,” placing the contract below overview to verify it complied with an govt order on the federal government’s use of economic 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 apply.
The information entry from final week mentioned that the contract with Parago is for “a completely configured proprietary resolution together with license, {hardware}, guarantee, upkeep, and coaching.” Virtually talking, except the {hardware} set up and coaching had been finished final yr, it could take a while for ICE to have Paragon’s system up and operating.
It’s additionally unclear if the adware will likely be utilized by ICE or HSI, an company whose investigations will not be restricted to immigration, but in addition cowl on-line baby sexual exploitation, human trafficking, monetary fraud, and extra.
Paragon has lengthy tried to painting itself as an “moral” and accountable adware maker, and now has to resolve if it’s moral to work with Trump’s ICE. So much 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 Crimson Lattice, in keeping with Israeli tech information web site 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 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 businesses.
LexisNexis’ authorized and public information databases
For years, ICE has used the authorized analysis and public information knowledge dealer LexisNexis to help its investigations.
In 2022, two non-profits obtained paperwork through Freedom of Info Act requests, which revealed that ICE carried out greater than 1.2 million searches over seven months utilizing a device referred to as Accurint Digital Crime Heart. ICE used the device to test the background info 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 against the law, a program {that a} critic mentioned enabled “mass surveillance.”
In response to public information, LexisNexis at present supplies ICE “with a regulation enforcement investigative database subscription (LEIDS) which permits entry to public information and industrial knowledge to help felony investigations.”
This yr, ICE has paid $4.7 million to subscribe to the service.
LexisNexis spokesperson Jennifer Richman informed TechCrunch that ICE has used the corporate’s product “knowledge 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 laws, and for the safety of all residents of the US,” mentioned Richman, who added that LexisNexis “companions with greater than 7,500 federal, state, native, tribal, and territorial businesses throughout the US to advance public security and safety.”
Surveillance big Palantir
Knowledge analytics and surveillance know-how big Palantir has signed a number of 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 significantly 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 primarily based on their immigration standing, bodily traits, felony affiliation, location knowledge, and extra.
404 Media cited “a supply aware of the database,” who mentioned it’s made up of ‘tables upon tables’ of knowledge and that it will possibly construct studies 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 lots of of knowledge factors).”
The device, 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 device referred to as “ImmigrationOS,” in keeping with a contract price $30 million revealed by Enterprise 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 individuals overstaying their visa, in keeping with a doc first reported on by Wired.
