Tech firms face scrutiny over ICE surveillance contracts, new report says
A report by Mijente, Just Futures Law and the Surveillance Resistance Lab alleges that U.S. immigration authorities have expanded their use of surveillance technologies developed by private firms, including Palantir and Anduril, reports a Qazinform News Agency correspondent.
Titled The Tech Behind ICE: Oligarchs, Immigration Enforcement, and the Threat to Democracy, the 86-page report argues that the growing relationship between the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and major technology firms is reshaping immigration enforcement through AI-powered surveillance and data analysis.
According to the report, "at this moment, a dangerous convergence of two trends threatens democracy," referring to what the authors describe as the rapid expansion of immigration enforcement technologies alongside the increasing political and economic influence of major technology executives.
The report says ICE and CBP have awarded multi-million-dollar contracts to surveillance, defense and AI companies over recent years, highlighting Palantir Technologies and defense technology firm Anduril among the key beneficiaries. It also identifies facial recognition systems, mobile phone extraction tools, license plate readers, social media monitoring platforms, drones and biometric databases as technologies increasingly used in immigration enforcement.
The authors argue that artificial intelligence is accelerating these capabilities.
"AI acts as an accelerator for some of the most extreme and authoritarian DHS practices, enabling more aggressive apprehensions, prosecutions, deportations, and retaliatory surveillance operations," the report states.
The report also examines the role of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), which oversees the nation's immigration courts and works closely with DHS. According to the authors, the DOJ has increasingly supported the expansion of DHS enforcement powers while managing procurement and legal frameworks tied to surveillance technologies. They also note that public funding has helped finance research and development of AI and other technologies used by federal agencies.
Surveillance tools raise wider civil rights concerns
Among its findings, the report says federal spending on DHS surveillance technologies has increased substantially in recent years, while proposed future U.S. budgets include tens of billions of dollars for AI infrastructure, unmanned systems and related technologies. The authors argue that these investments have strengthened what they describe as an expanding "immigration enforcement complex" supported by public funding.
The report further claims that surveillance systems initially developed for immigration enforcement could ultimately affect broader sections of society.
"The same technologies capable of targeting undocumented communities can monitor the population at large, expanding government power to surveil political activity, dissent, protest movements, and everyday life," the report says.
Concluding its analysis, the report calls for stronger public oversight of government technology procurement, greater transparency surrounding AI deployment, restrictions on biometric surveillance, and reforms to data-sharing practices between federal agencies and private technology companies.
Earlier, Qazinform News Agency reported that U.S. President Donald Trump announced a major reshuffle of his administration's immigration leadership, nominating Senator Markwayne Mullin to serve as Secretary of Homeland Security, replacing Kristi Noem.
