In addition to vowing an unprecedented number of deportations, President Donald Trump declared that he would make combating immigration one of his main goals during his second term in office.
After a year, data indicates that at least 350,000 people have been deported by Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
ICE has taken the lead in Trump's mass removal operation, searching public parks, workplaces, and residences for undocumented individuals. This has sparked protests and opposition from communities all around the country.
ICE identifies and monitors people using a variety of technologies. The shadow of Trump's deportations has also been used by Homeland Security to subvert long-standing legal conventions, such as forcing people into their homes to make arrests without a court order—a practice that legal experts claim violates the Fourth Amendment's ban on unjustified searches and seizures.
These are a few of the technologies that ICE uses.
Simulators for cell sites
Cell-site simulators are a device used by ICE to spy on cell phones. As the name implies, these surveillance devices are made to seem like a mobile tower in order to fool neighbouring phones into connecting to them. After that, the law enforcement officials using the cell-site simulators can find and identify the phones nearby and perhaps intercept internet traffic, text messages, and phone conversations.
Cell-site simulators are also referred to as "stingrays," based on the brand name of one of the first iterations of the technology, which was produced by U.S. defence contractor Harris (now L3Harris); or IMSI catchers, a technology that can record the unique identifier of a nearby cell phone so that law enforcement can identify the phone's owner.
Over the past two years, ICE has inked more than $1.5 million contracts with TechOps Speciality Vehicles (TOSV), a business that builds specially designed vans for law enforcement.
TOSV will supply “Cell Site Simulator (CSS) Vehicles to support the Homeland Security Technical Operations program,” according to a May 8, 2025, contract valued over $800,000.
According to TOSV president Jon Brianas, the company incorporates the cell-site simulators "into our overall design of the vehicle" rather of producing them, as he told TechCrunch.
For a number of reasons, cell-site simulators have long been contentious.
These devices intentionally collect the data of several innocent people by tricking all surrounding phones into connecting to them. Additionally, officials have occasionally used them without a warrant.
In court, authorities have also made an effort to conceal their use of cell-site simulators by withholding facts, accepting plea agreements, and even abandoning cases. It was disclosed in a 2019 Baltimore court case that prosecutors were told to withdraw charges instead of breaking a non-disclosure agreement with the device manufacturer.
Recognition of faces
Perhaps the most well-known facial recognition firm in existence today is Clearview AI. By looking through a vast collection of images it had taken from the internet, the company claimed to have been able to recognise any face for years.
404 Media announced on Monday that ICE and the business have inked a deal to provide Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), ICE's law enforcement division, "with capabilities of identifying victims and offenders in child sexual exploitation cases and assaults against law enforcement officers."
The contract inked last week is valued at $3.75 million, according to a government procurement database.
In recent years, ICE has entered into more agreements with Clearview AI. The agency paid $1.1 million to the corporation in September 2024 for "forensic software." ICE paid Clearview AI close to $800,000 for "facial recognition enterprise licenses" the previous year.
Additionally, ICE is utilising Mobile Fortify, a facial recognition program that federal officials use to identify individuals on the street. A large portion of the data used by the program comes from state driver's license databases, and it compares a user's driver's license photo to 200 million photographs.
Paragon spyware for phones
In September 2024, ICE and Israeli spyware manufacturer Paragon Solutions inked a $2 million deal. In order to ensure that the contract met with an executive order limiting the government's use of commercial spyware, the Biden administration issued a "stop work order" almost immediately.
The deal was in limbo for almost a year as a result of that order. The Trump administration withdrew the stop-work order last week, effectively reactivating the contract.
The current state of Paragon's practical relationship with ICE is unknown.
The contract with Paragon is for "a fully configured proprietary solution including license, hardware, warranty, maintenance, and training," according to the records entry dated last week. ICE may need some time to operationalise Paragon's system, unless they completed the hardware installation and training last year.
Additionally, it's unknown if ICE or HSI, an organisation that looks into issues like financial fraud, human trafficking, internet child sex abuse, and more, will employ the malware.
Paragon, which has long attempted to present itself as a responsible and "ethical" spyware manufacturer, must now determine if it is moral to collaborate with Trump's ICE. In the past year, Paragon has experienced many changes. According to Israeli tech news site Calcalist, Paragon was acquired by American private equity firm AE Industrial in December with plans to integrate it with cybersecurity firm RedLattice.
When TechCrunch contacted Paragon for comment on the reactivation of the ICE contract last week, we were sent to Jennifer Iras, RedLattice's new vice president of marketing and communications, which may indicate that the merger has occurred.
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Iras of RedLattice did not respond to a request for comment on this piece or the one from last week.
Recently, Paragon has been embroiled in an Italian spyware incident in which the government is said to have spied on immigration campaigners and journalists. Paragon severed its connections with Italy's intelligence services in retaliation.
Technology for unlocking and hacking phones
Magnet Forensics and Homeland Security Investigations, ICE's law enforcement division, inked a $3 million deal in mid-September.
According to the contract description, this agreement is specifically for software licenses that enable HSI agents to "recover digital evidence, process multiple devices," and "generate forensic reports."
The Graykey phone hacking and unlocking devices are currently manufactured by Magnet. In essence, these gadgets allow law enforcement personnel to connect to a locked phone, unlock it, and access its contents.
A attempt for comment from Magnet Forensics, which merged with Grayshift, the company that makes Graykey, in 2023, was not answered.
Location information for a cell phone
ICE purchased access to a "all-in-one" surveillance tool at the end of September, according to 404 Media, which enables the agency to look through databases of social media and previous mobile location data.
It looks like the gadget is composed of two products, Tangles and Webloc, manufactured by a firm called Penlink. A redacted contract seen by 404 Media states that one of the tools will use "a proprietary data platform to compile, process, and validate billions of daily location signals from hundreds of millions of mobile devices, providing both forensic and predictive analytics."
Although the deleted contract doesn't specify which tool provides that promise, Webloc is most likely the one based on its description. Webloc may search a certain location to "monitor trends of mobile devices that have given data at those locations and how often they have been there," according to a case study previously referenced by Forbes.
Companies all over the world use software development kits (SDKs) integrated into standard smartphone apps or an online advertising process known as real-time bidding (RTB), in which businesses bid in real-time to display an advertisement on a mobile user's screen based on their location or demographic information. This type of personal data is a byproduct of the latter process for ad tech companies.
Once collected, a data broker receives this vast amount of location data and subsequently sells it to governmental organisations. Authorities have exploited this type of data without obtaining a warrant by simply gaining access to it through this multi-layered approach.
According to Penlink's official website, the other tool, Tangles, is a "AI-powered open-source intelligence" application that automates "the search and analysis of data from the open, deep, and the dark web."
In September, Forbes revealed that ICE had invested $5 million in Penlink's two products.
Penlink has not responded to a request for comment.
Readers of license plates
In order to track drivers over a major portion of the United States and record their whereabouts and times, ICE depends on automated license plate reader (ALPR) firms.
In order to get immigration data through the back door, ICE also depends on its relationships with local law enforcement organisations that have agreements with ALPR providers, such as the monitoring firm Flock Safety. With more than 40,000 license plate scanners in the US, Flock is one of the biggest ALPR suppliers, and it is only growing because to its alliances with other businesses like Ring, a video surveillance firm.
Some police departments have blocked access to federal agencies due to ICE's informal requests for data from local law enforcement.
According to the Associated Press, the Border Patrol maintains its own ALPR camera monitoring network.
The public records and legal databases of LexisNexis
LexisNexis is a legal research and public records data broker that ICE has been using for years to assist with its investigations.
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ICE conducted more than 1.2 million searches over the course of seven months using a technology known as the Accurint Virtual Crime Centre, according to papers obtained by two non-profits in 2022 through Freedom of Information Act requests. The programme was utilised by ICE to verify the migrants' background information.
A year later, The Intercept disclosed that ICE was utilising LexisNexis, a program that some claimed allowed for "mass surveillance", to identify suspicious activities and look into migrants before they had committed a crime.
ICE now receives "a law enforcement investigative database subscription (LEIDS) which allows access to public records and commercial data to support criminal investigations," according to public records, from LexisNexis.
ICE has paid $4.7 million for a service subscription this year.
TechCrunch was informed by Jennifer Richman, a representative for LexisNexis, that ICE has been using the company's "data and analytics solutions for decades, across several administrations."
According to Richman, LexisNexis "partners with more than 7,500 federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial agencies across the United States to advance public safety and security. Our commitment is to support the responsible and ethical use of data, in full compliance with laws and regulations, and for the protection of all residents of the United States."
Palantir, a massive surveillance company
In the past year, ICE has inked many contracts with Palantir, a behemoth in data analytics and surveillance technology. In September 2024, the largest deal, valued at $18.5 million, was for a database system known as "Investigative Case Management", or ICM.
The ICM contract dates back to 2022, when Palantir and ICE inked a $95.9 million agreement. The partnership between ICE and the corporation formed by Peter Thiel began in the early 2010s.
The ICM database's operation was made public earlier this year by 404 Media, which has written extensively about the technology behind Trump's deportation attempts, especially Palantir's partnership with ICE. A newer version of the database, which enables ICE to filter individuals based on their location information, criminal connections, physical attributes, immigration status, and more, was spotted by the tech news site.
"A source familiar with the database" told 404 Media that it consists of "tables upon tables" of data and can create reports that display, for instance, individuals with a particular type of visa who entered the country at a particular port of entry, who originated in a particular nation, and who have a particular hair colour (or any number of hundreds of data points)."
Palantir's relationship with ICE and the tool was so contentious that insiders gave 404 Media access to an internal wiki in which Palantir defends its collaboration with Trump's ICE.
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According to a $30 million deal disclosed by Business Insider, Palantir is also creating a tool called "ImmigrationOS."
According to a document first revealed by Wired, ImmigrationOS is intended to provide "near real-time visibility" into self-deportations, track individuals who are overstaying their visas, and expedite the "selection and apprehension operations of illegal aliens".
Originally released on September 13, 2025, it was revised on September 18, 2025, to incorporate Magnet Forensics' new contract; on October 8, 2025, it was updated to incorporate location data and cell-site simulators; and on January 26, 2026, it was modified to incorporate licence plate readers.