Iris scanners, facial-recognition apps, phone-hacking software and cellphone location data are among the agency’s recent technological purchases.
By Eva Dou
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has been rapidly building out its surveillance capabilities in recent weeks, signing a string of contracts for technologies to identify individuals by their irises or facial features and to monitor their cellphone activity, social media posts and physical movements, according to a review of federal spending disclosures.
The blitz of surveillance purchases is motivated in large part by ICE’s intensive, nationwide campaign to find and deport undocumented immigrants. But documents show that some of the technology may also be used to target what the administration regards as anti-ICE extremist groups. Late last month, President Donald Trump declared “Antifa” a domestic terrorist organization in the wake of violent clashes and a Dallas shooting at an ICE facility, ordering all federal agencies to devote resources to investigating what he defined as “a militarist, anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government, law enforcement authorities, and our system of law.”
Shortly after Trump’s executive order, ICE’s acting director, Todd M. Lyons, told Glenn Beck in an interview that the agency will deploy some of its elite investigative officers to probe anti-ICE protester networks. “We have some of the best special agents, criminal investigators,” Lyons said on Beck’s podcast. “We are going to track the money. We are going to track these ringleaders.”
