On a cold morning in Chicago, a Colombian woman was pulled over in what police would call a routine traffic stop. To U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, it was anything but routine. Her car had been tagged in advance, cross-referenced against state vehicle records and federal immigration databases. Within minutes, she was under arrest, highlighting the rise of the ICE surveillance state 2025.
ICE would not say exactly how her license plate was flagged. It did not need to. The agency now sits at the centre of a web of government databases, commercial data brokers, telecom records, license-plate readers, facial recognition tools, and AI systems that can turn a single identifier — a car, a phone, a name on an asylum form — into a map of a person’s life.
This is what the United States’ post-9/11 data architecture looks like when it is pointed not at foreign terrorists, but at immigrants living inside the country’s borders.
From “Homeland Security” to Mass Deportation
The Department of Homeland Security was born out of the September 11 attacks, with a mandate to prevent another catastrophe and “safeguard the American people, our homeland, and our values.” Over two decades, that mission produced a vast surveillance infrastructure: bulk data collection, fusion centers, risk-scoring tools, biometric databases, and intelligence units with the remit to follow faint digital traces across borders, contributing to the evolving ICE surveillance state 2025.
Under the current Trump administration, much of that apparatus has been re-tasked. Instead of focusing primarily on complex criminal and national security threats, large parts of DHS — and particularly ICE — have been redirected toward one overriding political goal: deporting one million people in a single year.
Former officials describe a profound internal pivot. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) — the elite arm of ICE that was supposed to chase cartel bosses, child exploitation rings, and transnational criminal networks — has been reordered around civil immigration enforcement.
“You have roughly 6,500 agents trained for long, complex investigations,” one former official said. “Now they’re being told to spend their days working down deportation lists. It’s not what they signed up for.”
Internal communications, according to several ex-staffers, make the new priorities explicit: civil immigration enforcement first; everything else is secondary. The result is a powerful national security machine repurposed for everyday immigration policing.
A Data Spine Built on Government Records and Commercial Brokers
The raw fuel for this shift is data.
Most people ICE wants to deport are not “unknown.” Many entered lawfully to claim asylum or request protection, leaving long bureaucratic paper trails: names, birth dates, family members, fingerprints, addresses, phone numbers. What ICE often lacks is up-to-date location information.
So, the agency has widened its reach into other parts of the federal government. This year, the Social Security Administration began sharing citizenship information directly with DHS officers in the field. Even more controversial was a data-sharing arrangement with the Internal Revenue Service, whose records, by tradition and statute, are supposed to be among the most tightly guarded in government.
ICE requested information on millions of individuals and received tens of thousands of updated addresses. A federal judge later halted the IRS arrangement, finding a “substantial likelihood” that the deal was unlawful and could harm immigrants who had done the supposedly right thing: obtained work permits and paid their taxes.
The mentality inside parts of the department, one civil liberties advocate observes, has become: “If it’s somewhere in the executive branch, why shouldn’t ICE use it?”
That mindset extends beyond government. ICE leans heavily on private vendors to fuse federal and state data with commercial and public sources. Palantir Technologies has been a central partner for more than a decade, building systems such as Falcon and Investigative Case Management — platforms that ingest records from across agencies and spit out “targets” for operators in the field.
In parallel, an internal DHS innovation lab created its own cross-database system, Raven, which former officials describe as one of the most technically impressive tools in the federal government. But those same officials are quick to point out that the power of these systems depends entirely on how they are used — and how they are overseen.
License Plates, Utility Bills, Credit Files: Turning Everyday Life into Leads
The most chilling aspect of the new regime is not any single technology, but the way ordinary life has become data-rich terrain for enforcement.
Through products sold by Thomson Reuters and other vendors, ICE can reach into databases filled with:
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Utility records
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Vehicle registrations
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Credit report details
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Current and historical addresses
These commercial files are often more up to date than official government records — making them particularly valuable for locating people with pending immigration cases.
One tool, a national network of license-plate readers, allows ICE to query the historical movements of a vehicle or pull up every car spotted in a given area at a given time. Cameras mounted on police cruisers, toll booths, repossession trucks, and street poles continuously feed images into a central repository. ICE agents, via a mobile app, can scan plates in real time and receive alerts when a “person of interest” is nearby.
That capability has already been challenged in court. In one recent case, a federal judge found that agents violated the Fourth Amendment when they drove around randomly running plate numbers to see whether the registered owners might be in the country unlawfully. In another, a U.S. citizen was dragged from a car because ICE believed it was registered to her undocumented boyfriend; she later said it was the third time she had been stopped in the same neighborhood.
What began as a tool for locating stolen vehicles and tracking serious criminals is now deeply embedded in the immigration dragnet.
Buying What the Constitution Would Otherwise Protect
U.S. law generally requires judicial warrants and probable cause for intrusive surveillance. But there is a loophole: if the government buys data on the open market instead of compelling it under law, traditional constitutional protections often do not apply.
Former intelligence officials say they spent years wrestling with the ethics of this model. A central question, as one put it, was: “Are we purchasing information that we would never be allowed to seize directly under the Fourth Amendment?”
For a time, DHS’s own watchdogs — the Privacy Office and the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties — acted as brakes on the system. New vendor contracts were supposed to be scrutinised for legality and sensitivity: what exactly is being sold, how was it collected, is the broker itself obeying the law, and what might be the downstream risks if the data is misused?
According to multiple former staffers, those guardrails have eroded dramatically. Policy changes have placed fewer restrictions on the use of commercial data, and oversight bodies have been gutted or sidelined. The “balancing inquiry” that once governed these purchases has given way to a more permissive stance: if the data exists and budget is available, ICE can likely buy it.
Social Media, Private Investigators, and the New Human Hunt
The department’s appetite for information is not limited to databases.
ICE is actively recruiting staff and contractors to monitor social media and other “open-source” platforms. Advertised positions in Vermont and California describe a mission of pulling together intelligence from commercial systems, law-enforcement databases, and public posts.
The agency is also turning to old-fashioned private investigators, telling bidders to “use all technology systems available” — plus physical surveillance — to locate people on its lists. Officials estimate there are roughly 1.5 million names that could be farmed out, with vendors paid according to how many individuals they successfully track down. At the top end, contracts could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, one of Congress’s most persistent critics of post-9/11 surveillance, has warned that ICE’s embrace of purchased data is an attempt to “short-circuit due process” and sidestep Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights.
For communities that live under the shadow of deportation, the effect is palpable: the sense that the state can see everything, that any movement or transaction could be the thread that leads agents to their door.
Biometrics Everywhere: Faces, Fingerprints, DNA, and Eyes
In the field, digital surveillance converges with biometric control.
According to documents obtained through public-records requests and accounts from advocacy groups, ICE agents routinely use a smartphone application called Mobile Fortify. With it, they can snap a photo of a person’s face or collect contactless fingerprints, then query multiple government databases in seconds to check immigration and criminal histories.
Former DHS officials who saw the system in action call it “ripe for abuse.” Facial recognition technologies, they note, have higher error rates for people of color and are often poorly understood by the agents using them. Misidentifications can cascade quickly when an app is treated as an unimpeachable arbiter of truth.
The agency has also renewed contracts with Clearview AI, a controversial facial recognition company that built its database by scraping billions of images from social media and the open web. Earlier DHS documents framed Clearview as a tool for the most serious crimes, such as child sexual exploitation. Recent agreements add “assaults against law enforcement officers” — a category former officials fear could be stretched to include protesters and demonstrators.
Biometrics do not stop at faces and fingerprints. ICE and Customs and Border Protection collect DNA from detainees and certain asylum applicants, feeding samples into FBI databases that other agencies can query. Lawyers report cases where even U.S. citizens, incorrectly detained, have had their DNA taken — and then retained.
On top of that, ICE has purchased handheld iris-scanning devices from BI² Technologies, even though the agency holds relatively few iris records. To privacy experts, that suggests not just identification but fresh collection — a quiet expansion of the biometric net.
Spyware and Telecom Data: The Ghosts of Prior Scandals
The rush to new capabilities has also revived tools that were previously deemed too toxic.
After the Biden White House temporarily froze a $2 million contract with Israeli spyware maker Paragon Solutions over human-rights concerns, the deal re-emerged once the company came under U.S. private-equity ownership. Paragon’s flagship product, Graphite, is a phone-hacking tool that researchers say has been used to target journalists’ devices via iMessage and WhatsApp.
The optics are stark: an agency tasked with enforcing civil immigration law now has access to offensive cyber capabilities originally designed for counter-terrorism and high-end espionage.
Another contract, with AT&T, covers “data analytics services” and access to “raw data” for ICE’s Special Operations Unit. The language echoes an older, notorious program known as Hemisphere, which allowed government investigators to query trillions of call records and cell-site locations. Congressional overseers were told Hemisphere had been shut down. Newly disclosed contracts suggest something very similar may still be running under a different name.
Senator Wyden says the revelations raise profound questions. If old programs never truly ended but were simply rebranded and moved into new agencies, the entire post-Snowden reform effort begins to look like a shell game.
How Oversight Was Dismantled
Much of what we know about DHS’s surveillance universe comes from its own internal watchdogs: the Inspector General’s office, the Privacy Office, and Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL). These entities were set up to be the conscience of a sprawling security bureaucracy, empowered to say “no” when lines were about to be crossed.
Under the current administration, former officials say, those internal brakes have been deliberately weakened.
Trump appointees sought to eliminate CRCL altogether, and only backed down after litigation. Even then, staff numbers plunged — from more than a hundred positions to a few dozen, many of whom now handle internal HR matters rather than substantive oversight.
The Privacy Office, according to ex-employees, has been reduced to a “rubber stamp,” meeting the bare minimum statutory requirements while avoiding hard fights over new contracts and programs. Decisions that once required high-level review have been pushed down the chain, where career staff face intense pressure not to obstruct the political agenda.
The message from the top, one former official recalls, was simple: “You are not here to slow down immigration enforcement.”
Beyond Immigration: Toward a General-Purpose Domestic Security Machine
There is a final, deeper fear running through the accounts of former DHS officials: that the machinery built and refined in the name of immigration control is already being primed for other uses.
Trump has publicly described “antifa” — a loosely organised anti-fascist movement — as a domestic terrorist threat. Within DHS, some intelligence and enforcement units have begun to reframe their work under the broader banner of “domestic security,” an elastic label that can stretch to cover protest movements, left-wing groups, and anyone perceived as hostile to the administration.
The legal powers remain the same; the data pipelines are the same; the technology is the same. Only the target lists change.
“There’s a lot of old capabilities which, if misused, are pretty scary,” one former intelligence official warns. “The more data you collect and the fewer checks you have on how it’s used, the easier it becomes to turn a counter-terror system into a political weapon.”
The White House insists that sophisticated networks of protesters and activists require an equally sophisticated law-enforcement response. Critics counter that the line between genuine public safety and political retaliation is eroding — and that once a surveillance state is normalised, it is extremely difficult to roll back.
The Power — and Peril — of Data That Never Forgets
At its core, the ICE surveillance shift is about information: who holds it, who can access it, and for what purposes.
The system now under construction has several defining features:
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Permanence: Once collected, data rarely disappears. Biometric records, DNA, call logs, license-plate histories — all can be stored indefinitely and reused for new missions.
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Opacity: Individuals rarely know what is held about them, or how it has been analysed and shared. Even many line agents, officials say, do not fully understand the systems they use.
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Flexibility: Tools built for one purpose — terrorism, organised crime — can be retasked without public debate. The same facial recognition engine that identifies a child-abuse offender can be run on images from a protest.
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Asymmetry: While the state’s ability to watch expands, meaningful avenues to challenge or correct errors remain narrow and slow. Deportation proceedings often move faster than litigation about surveillance abuses.
For law-enforcement officials, this is a triumph of modernisation: an integrated, data-driven future where digital footprints guide agents to their targets. For immigrants and many civil liberties advocates, it looks more like the early architecture of a domestic security regime in which everyone is permanently trackable — and where political decisions about “who counts as a threat” can have immediate, life-altering consequences.
As one former inspector general put it, the dividing line is thin: “If this power is used to enforce legitimate law, that’s one thing. If it’s used to go after enemies, that’s another. The problem with any pool of data is simple: once it exists, someone will be tempted to use it for more than it was built for.”
The question now is not whether the United States has the technical capacity to monitor, categorise, and pursue millions of people within its borders. It clearly does. The question is whether the country is willing to accept the risks that come with unleashing that capacity in the name of immigration — and where that logic will inevitably lead next.
RESOURCE DIRECTORY
Comprehensive Sources on ICE Surveillance, Data Mining, Biometrics, and 2025 Deportation Enforcement
Government Sources
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U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) — oversight, policy, data initiatives
DHS Overview
U.S. Department of Homeland Security -
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — enforcement data, tech usage
ICE Enforcement & Removal Operations
ICE ERO Official Page -
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) — biometric + DNA collection disclosures
CBP Biometrics & DNA Collection Policy -
U.S. Department of Justice – FOIA Library — surveillance tool disclosures
DOJ FOIA Reading Room -
Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS) — AT&T, Palantir, Clearview, BI², Thomson Reuters contracts
FPDS Contract Database -
Internal Revenue Service (IRS) — privacy & data-sharing restrictions
IRS Privacy & Data Protections -
Social Security Administration (SSA) — citizenship status verification disclosures
SSA Privacy Program
Federal Courts, Oversight, and Investigations
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Deportation Data Project — ICE arrest data with criminal-status classification
Deportation Data Project -
U.S. District Court Orders on ICE Data-Sharing & Surveillance
(2025 rulings concerning IRS data-sharing and license-plate reader misuse) -
Government Accountability Office (GAO) — historical reviews of Hemisphere program
GAO Reports on Federal Surveillance Programs -
Inspector General, DHS — audits of ICE biometric and privacy programs
DHS OIG Reports
Investigative Journalism & Major Media Reporting
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Financial Times — ICE surveillance dragnet, contracts, biometrics
FT Investigations Desk -
The New York Times — facial recognition, geolocation, and DHS databases
NYT Surveillance Reporting -
The Washington Post — post-9/11 data systems, ICE & DHS tech repurposing
WaPo Technology & Privacy -
Reuters — telecom data, Hemisphere program, DHS intelligence
Reuters Technology & Security -
Associated Press (AP) — ICE conducting arrests based on data & social media
AP Immigration & Enforcement Coverage -
ProPublica — ICE tech procurement, data brokers, Palantir
ProPublica – Technology & Privacy -
404 Media — FOIA documents on Mobile Fortify facial recognition
404 Media Investigations -
The Intercept — data fusion centers, DHS intelligence use
The Intercept – Surveillance
Academic, Legal, and Think-Tank Research
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Georgetown Law – Center on Privacy & Technology
Facial recognition, national security repurposing, CLEAR database research
Georgetown Privacy & Technology -
Brennan Center for Justice
Mass surveillance, government data pipelines, intelligence powers expansion
Brennan Center – Surveillance -
Center for Democracy & Technology
IRS data-sharing, ICE geolocation access, government use of commercial data
CDT Surveillance Research -
Migration Policy Institute (MPI)
ICE enforcement trends, data-driven policing, HSI mission repurposing
MPI Immigration Enforcement Analysis -
The Citizen Lab (University of Toronto)
Paragon/Graphite spyware, phone hacking capabilities
Citizen Lab Reports
Civil Liberties & Digital Rights Organizations
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Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
Hemisphere program, license-plate readers, ICE data purchases
EFF – Government Surveillance -
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
Data brokers, facial recognition, ICE arrests without warrants
ACLU – Immigration Surveillance -
Immigrant Legal Resource Center (ILRC)
Deportation defense, surveillance during arrests
ILRC Enforcement Resources -
National Immigration Law Center (NILC)
Due process concerns, data privacy, government overreach
NILC Enforcement & Technology -
Lawyers for Civil Rights
Litigation support in ICE racial profiling and biometric misuse cases
Lawyers for Civil Rights
Technology Vendors Behind ICE’s Surveillance Expansion
Palantir Technologies
Data fusion, analytics, ImmigrationOS
Palantir Government Solutions
Thomson Reuters Special Services
CLEAR database, license-plate reader network
Thomson Reuters CLEAR
Clearview AI
Facial recognition search engine scraping billions of images
Clearview AI
BI² Technologies
Mobile iris scanners, biometric devices
BI² Technologies
AT&T Government Solutions
Telecom metadata analysis, Hemisphere-like capabilities
AT&T Public Sector
Paragon Solutions / Graphite Spyware
Device penetration tools used in intelligence operations
Paragon Solutions Profile (coverage via private equity acquisition)
Internal HLG Resources (Embed per HLG Standard)
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