ICE Wants to Build Out a 24/7 Social Media Surveillance Team

United States immigration authorities are moving to dramatically grow their social media surveillance, pinch plans to prosecute astir 30 contractors to sift done posts, photos, and messages—raw worldly to beryllium transformed into intelligence for deportation raids and arrests.

Federal contracting records reviewed by WIRED show that nan agency is seeking backstage vendors to tally a multiyear surveillance programme retired of 2 of its little-known targeting centers. The programme envisions stationing astir 30 backstage analysts astatine Immigration and Customs Enforcement accommodation successful Vermont and Southern California. Their job: Scour Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and different platforms, converting posts and profiles into caller leads for enforcement raids.

The inaugural is still astatine nan request-for-information stage, a measurement agencies usage to gauge liking from contractors earlier an charismatic bidding process. But draft readying documents show nan strategy is ambitious: ICE wants a contractor tin of staffing nan centers astir nan clock, perpetually processing cases connected tight deadlines, and supplying nan agency pinch nan latest and top subscription-based surveillance software.

The accommodation astatine nan bosom of this scheme are 2 of ICE’s 3 targeting centers, responsible for producing leads that provender straight into nan agency’s enforcement operations. The National Criminal Analysis and Targeting Center sits successful Williston, Vermont. It handles cases crossed overmuch of nan eastbound US. The Pacific Enforcement Response Center, based successful Santa Ana, California, oversees nan occidental region and is designed to tally 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Internal readying documents show that each tract would beryllium staffed pinch a operation of elder analysts, displacement leads, and rank-and-file researchers. Vermont would spot a squad of a twelve contractors, including a programme head and 10 analysts. California would big a larger, nonstop watch level pinch 16 staff. At each times, astatine slightest 1 elder expert and 3 researchers would beryllium connected work astatine nan Santa Ana site.

Together, these teams would run arsenic intelligence arms of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division. They will person tips and incoming cases, investigation individuals online, and package nan results into dossiers that could beryllium utilized by section offices to scheme arrests.

The scope of accusation contractors are expected to cod is broad. Draft instructions specify open-source intelligence: nationalist posts, photos, and messages connected platforms from Facebook to Reddit to TikTok. Analysts whitethorn besides beryllium tasked pinch checking much obscure aliases foreign-based sites, specified arsenic Russia’s VKontakte.

They would besides beryllium equipped pinch powerful commercialized databases specified arsenic LexisNexis Accurint and Thomson Reuters CLEAR, which knit together spot records, telephone bills, utilities, conveyance registrations, and different individual specifications into searchable files.

The scheme calls for strict turnaround times. Urgent cases, specified arsenic suspected nationalist information threats aliases group connected ICE’s Top Ten Most Wanted list, must beryllium researched wrong 30 minutes. High-priority cases get 1 hour; lower-priority leads must beryllium completed wrong nan workday. ICE expects astatine slightest three-quarters of each cases to meet those deadlines, pinch apical contractors hitting person to 95 percent.

The scheme goes beyond staffing. ICE besides wants algorithms, asking contractors to spell retired really they mightiness weave artificial intelligence into nan hunt—a inducement that mirrors different caller proposals. The agency has besides group speech much than a cardinal dollars a twelvemonth to limb analysts pinch nan latest surveillance tools.

ICE did not instantly respond to a petition for comment.

Earlier this year, The Intercept revealed that ICE had floated plans for a system that could automatically scan societal media for “negative sentiment” toward nan agency and emblem users thought to show a “proclivity for violence.” Procurement records antecedently reviewed by 404 Media identified package utilized by nan agency to build dossiers connected flagged individuals, compiling individual details, family links, and moreover utilizing facial nickname to link images crossed nan web. Observers warned it was unclear really specified exertion could separate genuine threats from governmental speech.

ICE’s main investigative database, built by Palantir Technologies, already uses algorithmic study to select immense populations and make leads. The caller statement would chimney caller societal media and open-source inputs straight into that system, further automating nan process.

Planning documents opportunity immoderate restrictions are basal to caput disconnected abuse. Contractors are barred from creating clone profiles, interacting pinch group online, aliases storing individual information connected their ain networks. All study must stay connected ICE servers. Past experience, however, shows specified guardrails tin beryllium flimsy, honored much successful paperwork than successful practice. Other documents obtained by 404 Media this summertime revealed that constabulary successful Medford, Oregon, performed licence sheet scholar searches for ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations division, while HSI agents later ran searches successful national databases astatine nan petition of section police—an informal back-and=forth that efficaciously gave ICE entree to devices it wasn’t authorized to use.

Other surveillance contracts person raised akin alarms. In September 2024, ICE signed a $2 cardinal statement pinch Paragon, an Israeli spyware institution whose flagship product, Graphite, tin allegedly remotely hack messaging apps for illustration WhatsApp and Signal. The Biden White House quickly froze nan deal nether an executive bid restricting spyware use, but ICE reactivated it successful August 2025 nether nan Trump administration. Last month, 404 Media filed a state of accusation lawsuit demanding ICE merchandise nan statement and related records, citing wide interest that nan instrumentality could beryllium utilized to target immigrants, journalists, and activists.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center has similarly sued ICE, calling its reliance connected information brokers a “significant threat to privateness and liberty.” The American Civil Liberties Union has argued that buying bulk datasets—such arsenic smartphone location trails gathered from mean apps—helps ICE sidestep warrant requirements and helps it propulsion successful immense amounts of information pinch nary clear nexus to its enforcement mandate.

The recently projected societal media programme is only nan latest successful a drawstring of surveillance contracts ICE has pursued complete nan past fewer years.

In 2020 and 2021, ICE bought entree to ShadowDragon’s SocialNet, a instrumentality that aggregates information from more than 200 societal networks and services into searchable maps of a person’s connections. Around nan aforesaid time, nan agency contracted pinch Babel Street for Locate X, which supplies location histories from mean smartphone apps, letting investigators reconstruct people’s movements without a warrant. ICE besides adopted LexisNexis Accurint, utilized by agents to look up addresses, vehicles, and associates, though nan standard of spending connected that work is unclear. In September, ICE signed a multimillion-dollar statement pinch Clearview AI, a facial nickname institution that built its database by scraping billions of images from societal media and nan nationalist web.

Throughout, ICE has leaned connected Palantir’s Investigative Case Management strategy to harvester disparate streams of information into a azygous investigative platform. Recent statement updates show nan strategy lets agents search group utilizing hundreds of categories, from migration position and state of root to scars, tattoos, and license-plate scholar data. Each surveillance statement ICE signs adds different layer—location trails, societal networks, financial records, biometric identifiers—feeding into Palantir’s hub. ICE’s caller inaugural is astir scaling up nan quality broadside of nan equation, stationing analysts astir nan timepiece to person nan firehose of information into raid-ready leads.

ICE argues it needs these devices to modernize enforcement. Its readying documents statement that “previous approaches … which person not incorporated unfastened web sources and societal media information, person had constricted success.” The agency suggests that tapping societal media and unfastened web information helps place aliases, way movements, and observe patterns that accepted methods often miss.

With plentifulness of historical analogs to choose from, privateness advocates pass that immoderate surveillance that starts arsenic a method of capturing immigrants could soon beryllium deployed for ulterior purposes. ICE’s connection to way “negative sentiment” is simply a clear illustration of really nan agency’s threat monitoring bleeds into nan policing of dissent. By drafting successful nan online activity of not only its targets but besides friends, family, and organization members, ICE is definite to cod acold much accusation extracurricular its instruction than it is apt to publically concede.