Here’s the tech powering ICE’s deportation crackdown 

President Donald Trump made immigration one of his leading issues during the presidential campaign last year, and promised an unprecedented number of deportation.

In the first eight months in his post, this promise turned into about 350,000 deportations, a number that includes deportations by enforcement of immigration and customs (about 200,000), customs and border protection (more than 132,000), and about 18,000 self -messengers, according to CNN.

ICE occupied the lead in Trump’s latitude, dictatorship, workplaces, and public parks in search of illegal immigrants. To help its efforts, the ice may be at its disposal in many techniques that are able to identify and wipe individuals and societies.

Below is a summary of some technology that ICE has in its digital arsenal.

Clearview ai face recognition

Clearview Ai may be the most famous face recognition company. For years, the company promised to be able to define any face by searching through a large database of the images it has taken from the Internet.

On Monday, 404 media reported that ICE had signed a contract with the company to support national law enforcement security investigations (HSI), “with the capabilities of identifying victims and criminals in cases of sexual exploitation of children and attacks against law enforcement officers.”

According to the government purchasing database, the contract signed last week is of $ 3.75 million.

Ice had other contracts with Clearview AI in the past two years. In September 2024, the agency bought the “forensic program” from the company, a $ 1.1 million deal. In the previous year, Ice Clearview AI paid about $ 800,000 for “face recognition institutions”.

Clearview AI did not respond to the comment.

Paragon Phone Spyware

In September 2024, ICE signed a $ 2 million contract with Paragon Solutions to make Israeli spyware. Almost immediately, the Biden Administration issued a “suspension order”, and the contract was placed under review to ensure that it complies with an executive matter on the government’s commercial use.

Because of this arrangement, for about a year, the contract remained in a state of forgetfulness. Then, last week, the Trump administration raised the stopping order, and effectively activated the contract.

At this stage, it is not clear what Paragon’s relationship with ICE is in practice.

The entry of records from last week said that the contract with Paraguce is dedicated to “a royal solution that has been fully formed, including licensing, devices, guarantee, maintenance and training.” Practically, unless devices and training are installed last year, it may take some time until the Paragon system is operated.

It is also not clear whether ICE or HSI will be used spyware, an agency whose investigations are not limited to immigration, but also cover sexual exploitation for children online, human trafficking, financial fraud, and more.

Paraguce has long tried to portray himself as a “moral” spyware maker, and he now has to decide whether it is moral to work with Ice for Trump. A lot of Paragon happened last year. In December, AE Industrial Paragon Paragon has bought a plan to integrate with Red Lattice for cybersecurity, according to Israel News Calcalist.

In a sign that the merger had occurred, when Techcrunch reached Paragon to comment on the reactivation of the ICE contract last week, we were referred to the new deputy marketing and communications head of Redlattice.

Iras did not respond to Redlattice to request a comment on this article, nor to the article last week.

In the past few months, Paraguce has been excluded in the scandal of spyware in Italy, where the government has been accused of spying on journalists and immigration activists. In response, Paraguce cut ties with intelligence agencies in Italy.

Lexisnexis databases for legal and public rules

For years, ICE has used legal research and public records of the Lexisnexis data broker to support its investigations.

In 2022, non -profit documents were obtained through the requests of the Freedom of Information Law, which revealed that Ice had conducted more than 1.2 million seven months of searches using a tool called Accurint Virtual Crime Center. ICE use the tool to check the basic information of migrants.

A year later, the intersection revealed that Ice was using Lexisnexis to detect suspicious activity and investigate immigrants before they committed a crime, a program that the critic said was “collective observation”.

According to public records, LEXISNEXIS currently provides “with the subscription of the Law enforcement database (LEIDS), which allows access to public records and commercial data to support criminal investigations.”

This year, ICE paid $ 4.7 million to subscribe to the service.

Lexisnexis techcrunch spokeswoman Jennifer Richman told the company’s “data solutions and analyzes for decades, through many departments”.

“Our commitment is to support the responsible and moral use of data, complete compliance with laws and regulations, and to protect all the population of the United States,” said Richman, who added that Lixesnes “” partners with more than 7,500 federations, government, tribal, and regional agencies across the United States to promote safety and public security. ”

The monitoring giant in the tin

The giant Palantir signed data analyzes and monitoring technology several contracts with ICE last year. The largest contract, at a value of $ 18.5 million of September 2024, is for a database system called “investigation status management”, or ICM.

ICM contract dates back to 2022, when Palantir signed a $ 95.9 million deal with Palantir. The relationship of PEER Thiel, which was established with ICE, is early 2010.

Earlier this year, 404 media, which has widely reported technology that operates Trump’s deportation efforts, especially related to ICE, revealed details about how ICM database works. The Technical News website reported that it witnessed a recent version of the database, which allows ICE to liquidate people based on the state of immigration, their material characteristics, criminal affiliation, site data, and more.

The media cited 404 “a source familiar with the database”, which he said consisting of “tables on tables” of data and that they could build reports, for example, people who have a specific type of visa who came to the country at a specific entry outlet, who came from a specific country, and have a specific hair color (or any number of data points). ”

The tool, and the relationship of Palantir with ICE, was so controversial enough that the sources inside the company leaked to 404 media outlets in internal wiki where it justifies the work with Ice for Trump.

Palantir is also developing a tool called “Diggrationos”, according to a $ 30 million contract revealed by Business Insider.
It is said that the migration designed to simplify the “selection and foreigners’ foreigners ’foreigners” gives a “actual vision” in self -sending, and to follow people who exceed their visa, according to a document that was reported for the first time by WIRE.