How ICE Became America’s Secret Surveillance Agency

ICE isn’t just tracking immigrants. It’s tracking you.

You do not need to be undocumented to land on ICE’s radar anymore. You just need to know someone who is. Or post something they do not like. Or even just open a text message. Maybe you just so happened to pass through a place where their network of systems are set in place. That could be a protest, a courthouse, or even at a traffic stop. Surveillance

It could’ve happened many different ways.

Your phone may have connected to one of the fake cell towers they’ve set up. Or maybe you were caught on a traffic camera, or in the background of a photo on social media scanned by AI. Or maybe a DHS agent wearing METAs video-recording sunglasses took one looked at you for just one second.

Or ICE just intentionally scanned your face in with Mobile Fortify — an app on their cellphones. Or Palantir’s ImmigrationOS which also has that capability.

But it doesn’t matter how it happened. It doesn’t matter if you didn’t do anything illegal, or that you are a U.S. citizen. Your face, your personal information, and your digital footprint have already been captured, scanned, and stored by ICE before you could ever say no. Added to decades of information they’ve linked together.

The truth is, they probably already know more about you than you think. I can’t imagine the kind of lists I’m on, or what my file looks like. So, I want to preface this by saying I don’t want you to read this to be afraid. I want you to read to understand that the data is already collected going back years, the file already exists, and fear is the tool they’re counting on. But you still have power.

Do not comply with authoritarianism in advance just because you’re afraid of being flagged or watched. The truth is they’ve already been watching all of us for a long time.

Once you understand that, the next question is. . . what exactly are they building with all of this? What are these systems for, and how far do they reach? And who is behind all this?

This article is long. But I really suggest you stick around if you can. Because once you understand how deep this goes, you realize it’s not about immigration at all.

They don’t just know who you are. They know who you’re connected to, what you posted, what your face looks like from five different angles, what neighborhood you live in, what kind of car that you drive, where your social media profiles are, where your GPS pings, where your IP address pings, what kind of benefits you’ve received from the state, and even what brand of cereal you buy.

This is not an exaggeration. I have receipts. Highlighted or underlined words in this piece are source links. I encourage you to fact check everything I am saying in this article because I wouldn’t of believed it if I didn’t see it myself, either.

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So, on paper, ICE & CBP were created to enforce immigration law. They were even supposed to help people with immigrating into America. That was the premise, at least.

But over the last decade (and especially this year with the extensive amount of DHS funding given to them in the “Big Beautiful Bill”) they’ve been handed the contracts, the software, the money, and permission to create a domestic surveillance infrastructure of Americans with almost no limits. And seemingly no accountability.

ICE, CBP, and HSI all operate under the umbrella of DHS. The Department of Homeland Security. And, in my research, I found layers upon layers of publicly available ICE, CBP, & DHS surveillance contracts. Some dated back to as the early as the birth of the agency itself in 2002 following the fall of the towers in 2001. It feels as if the NSA, CIA, and DoD had a ‘baby,’ and that baby is named DHS.

These services include but aren’t limited to the use of: Palantir, Oracle, Amazon Web Services, Zignal Labs, SOS International LLC (SOSi), L3Harris, SocialNet, Locate X, Mobile Fortify, Paragon, Clearview AI, Carahsoft Technology, LexisNexis, Thompson Reuters, and way, way more. This is not even the tip of iceberg.

The Network of Watchers

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• Palantir connects all your data into one big government file. Oracle helps store and manage that data.

• Amazon Web Services (AWS) hosts the systems that keep it all running. They’re infamous for hosting spyware.

• Zignal Labs uses artificial intelligence (AI) to scan social media to find migrants, and flags posts they think are negative against ICE.

• SOSi tracks where people are and who they know creating a diagram of a person, their family, and their contacts.

• L3Harris makes fake cell towers called Stingrays that trick your phone into giving up data.

• SocialNet maps your online connections using your posts and profiles.

• Locate X sells your phone’s location history to the government.

• Mobile Fortify and ImmigrationOS allows ICE agents scan your face on the street to run against their database, and to collect more information.

• META provides video and audio recording tech through devices like their Ray-Ban smartglasses, which ICE agents have been seen wearing during operations.

• Paragon makes spyware called Graphite that can break into your phone without you ever clicking a link.

• Clearview AI collects faces and turns them into a searchable database. They’re using it to find people who “assault agents.”

• Carahsoft sells these surveillance tools to DHS and other agencies.

• Thomson Reuters and LexisNexis sell our personal, legal, and financial records to ICE, including addresses, shopping data, court records, family ties, and utility bill data.

  • There’s a bill — The Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act — that was introduced to prevent the government from using this very data. It would kill this entire network, but it’s been sitting in the House for a very long time untouched. Hmm, I wonder why that is?

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And yet, somehow, there are even more. Some haven’t even been uncovered yet. Some are being hidden by our own government.

Right now, 404 Media is suing ICE for ignoring a FOIA request that asked a simple question: who signed the brand new contracts to staff the two buildings set to monitor your social media next year?

ICE plans to run this out of two sites — one in Williston, Vermont, and one in Santa Ana, California. Vermont will operate during the day. California will run 24/7.

You know, these are the contractors that ICE wants to monitor Facebook, Instagram, Threads, TikTok, Google, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, PACER Court Records, the dark web, somehow even MySpace.

Yes — MySpace — the now defunct social media platform that was bought years ago. Is Tom still in your top 10?

And of course, ICE won’t say who they hired. So they’re being sued. And keep in mind, this will be additional. It’s added on top of the several AI systems that are already doing it now. And this is all being paid for with our tax dollars.

I’m going to keep following this court case closely, and when there are updates on who is profiting from monitoring our socials, you can anticipate an update from me here on this Substack.

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Outside of the decades worth of contracts, you have to also keep in mind to include their subcontractors — or the subcontractors that their subcontractors hired — or the dozens of shell companies buried in the murky waters of ICE’s contracting web.

One example? The man who owns the tent-city ICE detention facility on a military base in Texas, nicknamed “Lonestar Lockup,” registered the company to what is quite literally his personal house. That’s his official business address. That’s the level of oversight we’re talking about.

But if you dig deep enough, can start to see who’s profiting. The names are there, if you know where to look. Click this link to see the full detailed map showing the names of some of the corporations that are profiting from this. Not all are surveillance companies, but too many are.

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They Are Using Spyware

But somehow, the social media monitoring isn’t even the worst part. Because even if you manage to live without leaving a trace online, we need to talk about spyware. Yes, spyware.

Yes, I know. I sound like your uncle in a tinfoil hat.

But this September, ICE bought Graphite, a spyware tool made by an Israeli company called Paragon. It lets them break into phones without you clicking anything. It’s a form of malware, but infecting your phone requires no link, no download, and you have no warning. They can just do it. They just have to send you a message. It’s been used in Italy to stalk and harass journalists and activists already.

You don’t have to be a suspect to be infected. You just have to be connected to someone who is. Or be part of a group chat that gets flagged. Or follow the wrong account. Spyware doesn’t ask questions.

It can open encrypted messaging apps like Signal or WhatsApp, pull your photos, contacts, and location history, and send everything to a third-party cloud run by DHS. Palantir is the one analyzing it. You probably won’t even know it happened. There’s no alert, no pop-up, no way to see it unless the app you were infected from catches it and tells you.

An ICE agent wearing the META Ray-Ban smart glasses, capable of recording video and audio, during an ICE raid in 2025.

In the past, people found out by chance when Apple or META sent a warning saying they might have been targeted by state-sponsored spyware. It’s not perfect, and it won’t catch everything.

But if you ever get one of those alerts, believe it. It’s not spam. It’s not a scam. Treat it like a fire alarm. Because it is. It means you need to factory reset your phone.

Spyware like Graphite gives ICE something no warrant or wiretap can: instant, invisible access to a person’s entire digital life. Phones are gold because they hold decrypted messages, contacts, GPS history, photos, and social networks that other tools can’t reach as quickly. With Graphite, ICE can infect a phone remotely, collect data in real time, and do it all without the target ever knowing.

There is no pop-up, no warning, and no need for cooperation from platforms like WhatsApp or Signal. The agency can gather intelligence across borders, map family ties, track communication networks, and monitor encrypted conversations that would normally require judicial approval.

It is not hard to see why this appeals to them. Spyware like Graphite lets ICE move fast, quietly, and without oversight. It can identify networks, trace contacts, and flag people for further surveillance long before any actual crime is proven.

“Stingrays (also known as “IMSI Catchers” or “Cell-Site Simulators”) intercept cell phones’ connections to communications towers in order to scoop up data from cellphones in a given geographical area.” (Source)

When this data feeds into Palantir’s systems, it starts to look less like immigration enforcement and more like pre-crime monitoring, where being connected to the wrong person or saying the wrong thing online is enough to make you a target. ICE is already actively monitoring for people speaking out against them online.

And they’ve been using Stingrays for years. These are produced by the “L3 Harris” company we talked about above. These are fake cell towers that trick your phone into connecting. Once you’re hooked, they can track your location, intercept your calls, and pull identifying data from your device — without a warrant, without your consent, and often without you ever knowing.

You don’t need to break the law. You just need to be near one. And they can be in buildings or cars. All it takes is being at the wrong traffic stop.

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How It All Ties Together

This is not just a story about ICE or immigration. It is a story about power, surveillance, and a government that quietly built the infrastructure to track nearly everyone inside its borders. What started as immigration enforcement has grown into a nationwide dragnet. Every data point, every app, every facial recognition scan, every photo, every protest, every location ping — it all feeds into one massive system, held together by cloud servers, spyware, and billion-dollar contracts. When Trump signed the executive order to merge government databases, he didn’t invent this system. He simply flipped the switch on something that had been quietly built over two decades, and handed it the funding and legal cover to run full speed.

What you need to understand is that you don’t have to be undocumented to be caught in it. You don’t even have to be political. You just need to be nearby. Maybe you passed a protest. Maybe you were tagged in a photo. Maybe you followed the wrong account, or shared the wrong post. That’s how wide the net is now.

But this doesn’t mean you’re powerless. It means you’re aware. And awareness is the first step toward resistance. That’s why they tried to keep this hidden. Because once people know what’s really happening — what’s already been done — they start asking the right questions. They start organizing. They start pulling the thread. And those threads lead to real accountability, real resistance, and real change.

So here’s what I’m asking you to do. Read the sources I linked in this piece. Talk to your people. Share this article. Especially with those who still think ICE is just about immigration. Support the journalists and researchers tracking these contracts. Support the lawsuits forcing this system into the light. And if you’re able, consider subscribing to Dissent in Bloom so I can keep digging and publishing these findings. You can subscribe for free, or you have the option of a paid subscription to help me continue doing this work.

We can’t fight what we don’t know. But now you know. And there’s more to know. This will be a multi-part series. I just couldn’t fit all I discovered in one article. Stay tuned.

We are not alone in this. We can still do something about it. Don’t be afraid. Keep standing for what is right.

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