An ICE agent no longer needs to ask for your papers; they can simply point a smartphone at your face. Armed with artificial intelligence, the current administration has transformed mundane spaces, such as school parking lots and busy intersections, into instruments of mass surveillance. By weaponizing this technology against immigrants and U.S. citizens alike, the government has empowered ICE to act as agents of domestic terrorism. This has normalized an expansion of the American surveillance state and facilitated the construction of a deportation machine that continues to operate violently and invasively without repercussion.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has poured millions of dollars into artificial intelligence for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). These investments fund tools that enable ICE to monitor, track, scan, and predict the movements of people across the United States without warrants or consent.
A major portion of this funding has gone to Palantir Technologies, with roughly $30 million going into Palantir’s ImmigrationOS system. This platform organizes and analyzes massive amounts of personal data, tracking individuals through every stage of the immigration process and especially monitoring visa overstays and self-deportation. The language used by Palantir to describe this system centered on minimizing the “time and resource expenditure” of deportations, prioritizing efficiency and comprehensive tracking. This is conducive to the language of mass deportation the Trump administration has insisted on. If such a system can monitor immigrants this closely and maximize the efficiency of removal, imagine the implications this could hold for the next marginalized group the government chooses as a scapegoat.
More alarmingly, ICE has expanded its use of biometric tools, paying $3.75 million for facial recognition services from Clearview AI and $4.6 million for iris-scanning smartphones from B12 Technologies. One of the most invasive biometric tools at their disposal is Mobile Fortify, a facial recognition app that draws from more than 200 million images stored in databases belonging to DHS, the FBI, and the State Department. Mobile Fortify works by simultaneously searching multiple government databases, giving agents deeper access to a person’s networks and history, intrusively collapsing years of private data instantaneously into an easy-to-read profile. With this tool in hand, an ICE officer can simply point a phone at someone on a U.S. street, allowing the app to scan a person’s face and instantly check citizenship status, deportation orders, and pull up personal records. Individuals cannot opt out of this scan. Instead of asking for identification, the ability to nonconsensually extract biometric data directly from a person’s body allows ICE agents to weaponize a person’s mere existence in a public space against them.
ICE also uses Webloc, a tool that tracks mobile phone locations, which facilitates their malicious and intentional monitoring of individuals. The agency uses commercially available data taken from the routine digital activity of smartphone users to track people’s movements without going through phone carriers or obtaining a warrant. This background collection of data allows ICE to draw a digital boundary around a neighborhood, block, or gathering and then identify the phones, and therefore the people, present in that space. Even without any suspicion of wrongdoing, individuals can have their location monitored by ICE, which can turn mundane parts of their everyday lives into records used to target them.
This monitoring is further expanded through automated license plate reader networks. Companies such as Flock sell cloud-connected cameras to police departments across the country, collecting license plate data and storing it in databases that agencies such as ICE can search nationwide. Existing policing infrastructure already disproportionately targets minority communities, so layering ICE surveillance into these systems only broadens the scope of who can be tracked.
ICE is not just stopping at legal or commercially available data; it is pushing for an even more pervasive encroachment into the private lives of Americans. This is evident in the purchase of surveillance technology from Paragon Solutions, a company that sells phone-hacking tools to law enforcement and intelligence agencies. These tools allow government agencies such as ICE to remotely break into smartphones, providing them access to things like encrypted messages, a phone’s microphone and camera, and photos. This moves beyond simple tracking into full-blown intrusion.
Across states such as Minnesota, historic mass mobilizations have pushed entire communities to challenge ICE’s infiltration of their neighborhoods and the systemic campaigns of terror the agency has waged against the public. These centers of political contention have allowed ICE to use a variety of these tools to move beyond individual surveillance into the surveillance of entire communities, including protesters and people documenting the actions of federal agents. While this is largely accomplished by tracking the movements of large groups of people in real time to target protests and public gatherings, ICE has also employed other tactics, such as the monitoring of social media presence of those it deems political dissenters. The investigative arm of ICE recently signed a multimillion-dollar contract with Zignal Labs, a platform that claims to analyze more than 8 billion posts per day. According to ICE’s August 2025 privacy impact assessment, these tools are intended to “track threats to the agency.” However, they have been pushed far beyond that narrow purpose to include anyone who expresses opposing opinions, criticizes the federal government, or attends protests, even while those activities are protected under the First Amendment.
This monitoring has already led to tragic consequences, including the murder of Alex Pretti earlier this year. A week before he was killed, a group of federal agents assaulted him while he was protesting the detention of members within his community, breaking his rib in the process. He was labeled as a threat and subsequently monitored for “obstructing justice.” His death was not an accident; investigators had constructed a profile on Pretti that was deliberately used to place a target on his back. The extension of surveillance from abstract “threats” to people demanding justice has normalized state violence against its citizens.
Besides clear infringements on the right to protest stipulated by the First Amendment, the expansion of ICE’s surveillance powers has blurred other constitutional limits on government intrusions into people’s personal data. Under the Fourth Amendment, the government is generally required to obtain a warrant before accessing private information. Yet agencies within the Department of Homeland Security, including ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), are leveraging the personal and local data they collect to evade the need for obtaining a warrant. With tools such as Webloc, ICE does not seek judicial approval because the data is commercially acquired. With Mobile Fortify, the agency argues it does not need a warrant because it is simply querying databases the government already controls.
Even when more invasive spyware tools are used, warrant requirements tend to be inconsistent. The result is a system that operates in a legal gray area, where surveillance expands faster than constitutional safeguards can restrain it.
For immigrant communities, this means constant exposure to tracking, facial recognition scans, and predictive targeting in schools, neighborhoods, workplaces, and protests. For U.S. citizens, it means their data is swept up in the same systems made to target immigrants, as their information is captured simply by existing in public space. Surveillance does not stop at immigration status.
This rapid expansion of surveillance powers was combined with a rapid expansion of ICE personnel. DHS has publicly stated that it hired more than 12,000 ICE officers and agents within a matter of months. Given this expedited timeframe, reports indicate that recruitment standards were lowered and vetting processes were fast-tracked, prioritizing availability over rigorous background checks.
As a result, concerns about agency affiliations with white supremacist groups have emerged, particularly as ICE has rolled out recruitment campaigns that rely on aggressively “patriotic” imagery. While certain symbolism in these advertisements may merely appear comically hyper-American, it is also distinctly white supremacist. For instance, an image of George Washington on horseback linked to an ICE recruitment page was accompanied by the slogan “America for Americans.” This phrase was initially used by President Theodore Roosevelet in a xenophobic speech, but it was popularized by the Ku Klux Klan to promote racist and anti-immigrant sentiments, framing white Protestantism as the only true American identity. More recently, after the murder of Renee Good in Minneapolis, ICE promoted a recruitment post with the caption, “We’ll have our home again,” referencing a song by Pine Tree Riots that echoes the nationalist rhetoric of neo-Nazis, including lyrics about “reclaiming” the American homeland. Far-right extremist groups, including the Proud Boys, have responded favorably to these recruitment campaigns, openly signaling their approval online. This is unsurprising. By relying on messaging embraced by white supremacists, ICE is deliberately attracting individuals who see immigration enforcement as a racialized project fueling the administration’s true goal of enforcing racial hierarchy through the systemic exclusion and criminalization of non-white populations.
When powerful surveillance tools are placed in the hands of rapidly recruited and untrained white supremacists, discriminatory targeting and abuse become structurally embedded within the institution of ICE itself. This combination of advanced surveillance technology and ideologically motivated targeting has turned immigration enforcement into a weapon of racialized mass deportation. The disproportionate attack on marginalized communities by law enforcement is not new, but the fact that ICE is operating with an unprecedented amount of precision allows it to carry out the forcible detention and removal of immigrants in an increasingly frightening way.
The implications of this technology extend far beyond immigrant communities. This systemic breach of privacy and trust empowers an administration tearing families apart while codifying a surveillance system that threatens the civil liberties of every American, regardless of citizenship status. These surveillance systems used by ICE can capture data on anyone, citizens and noncitizens alike. This has created a terrifying reality where the monitoring of marginalized communities, political dissidents, and ordinary residents will only continue to expand, while civil liberties will continue to be eroded under the guise of security.
Featured Image Source: Politico