ICE: United States immigration officials plan to significantly broaden their online surveillance operations, aiming to recruit nearly thirty contractors to analyze posts, pictures, and communications—turning that information into intelligence for deportation missions and apprehensions.
Government procurement records examined by WIRED reveal that the department is searching for private organizations to handle a long-term monitoring project from two lesser-known targeting centers.
Contractor Deployment And Operational Centers
The program envisions assigning close to thirty independent analysts to Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities in Vermont and Southern California. Their responsibility includes exploring Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and other networks, transforming profiles and uploads into potential leads for enforcement actions.
Program Planning And Technological Demands
This initiative remains at the information-request phase, a step authorities use to assess interest from vendors before the official proposal stage. Draft plans indicate the effort is extensive: ICE requires a contractor capable of staffing the offices continuously, swiftly handling investigations, and equipping the agency with updated subscription-based surveillance applications.
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Targeting Centers And Regional Operations
The central facilities in this initiative are two of ICE’s three targeting centers, which develop investigative leads for the agency’s enforcement divisions. The National Criminal Analysis and Targeting Center, located in Williston, Vermont, manages cases for much of the eastern United States. The Pacific Enforcement Response Center in Santa Ana, California, supervises operations in the western zone and functions around the clock.
Staffing And Role Assignments
Internal plans indicate each center would include senior analysts, shift supervisors, and research personnel. Vermont would have about twelve contractors, including one program coordinator and ten analysts, while California would maintain a larger, continuous operations team with sixteen employees. At least one senior analyst and three researchers would remain on duty at the Santa Ana branch.
Data Collection And Open-Source Intelligence
Together, these analysts function as intelligence extensions of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division. They collect reports, investigate subjects online, and compile results into files for field officers to plan operations. The variety of data expected is extensive—public posts, images, and conversations from social platforms like Facebook, Reddit, and TikTok. They may also examine smaller or foreign-based sites, including VKontakte.
Databases And Research Tools
These specialists would also apply sophisticated, profitable databases such as LexisNexis Accurint and Thomson Reuters CLEAR, mixing property credentials, phone records, billing data, vehicle possession, and other individual information into searchable archives.
Strict Timelines And Case Management
The strategy establishes firm completion times. Urgent matters, such as possible national security dangers or individuals on ICE’s Most Wanted list, must be analyzed within thirty minutes. High-priority issues require one hour, while lower-priority leads must conclude within the same day. ICE anticipates seventy-five percent of all cases meeting these targets, with exceptional teams achieving up to ninety-five percent.
Integration Of Artificial Intelligence
The proposal extends beyond recruitment. ICE also demands the inclusion of automated systems, requesting contractors to describe how artificial intelligence could assist in investigations. The department has allocated over a million dollars annually to provide analysts with the newest digital tracking solutions.
Past Controversies And Legal Concerns
Earlier this year, reports exposed ICE’s plans for systems capable of automatically scanning social media for negative sentiment toward the agency and marking users showing tendencies for aggression. Other records revealed software used to create profiles of marked individuals, including family links and facial recognition tools connecting images throughout the web. Experts warned the technology might blur distinctions between real dangers and political expressions.
Restrictions And Oversight
ICE’s central database, designed by Palantir Technologies, already employs algorithmic filters to sort large populations and produce investigative leads. The new project would directly supply additional online and open-source inputs to that system, enhancing automation.
Documents note restrictions forbidding contractors from creating fake accounts, engaging users online, or saving personal data outside ICE’s infrastructure. However, historical evidence suggests such protections are inconsistently enforced.
Previous Surveillance Deals And Controversy
In 2024, ICE finalized a two-million-dollar agreement with Paragon, an Israeli spyware creator known for a tool capable of accessing messaging applications like WhatsApp and Signal. The White House initially suspended the contract under an executive order limiting spyware usage.
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But ICE revived it in mid-2025 under a new administration. Media organizations have since filed legal petitions demanding the release of the full contract and related documentation due to widespread concern about potential misuse.
Privacy Advocacy And Public Backlash
Privacy advocacy groups such as the Electronic Privacy Information Center have sued ICE, describing its dependence on data brokers as a severe risk to civil freedom. The American Civil Liberties Union contends that buying enormous datasets, such as smartphone tracking information from everyday apps, allows ICE to avoid warrant procedures and gather extensive data unrelated to enforcement purposes.
Future Of ICE’s Surveillance Initiative
This newly proposed digital surveillance system represents only the most recent step in ICE’s continuous expansion of monitoring contracts over recent years. If implemented, it may reshape the boundaries of federal observation programs and raise renewed questions about privacy, ethics, and governmental accountability.