A new report sheds light on the unprecedented growth of the U.S. government's immigration surveillance arsenal, revealing that spending on technology and AI tools to find and track migrants has soared to record levels during Donald Trump's second term.
The report, released this week, analyzed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) contracts with 11 companies that provide surveillance tech. It found that money awarded to these firms doubled from 2024 to 2025, reaching just over $310 million, and in 2026, that number soared to a record $513 million.
Steady Increase Since 2013
Researchers traced these contracts as far back as 2013, when they hovered under $50 million, and found a steady increase over time, with a bigger jump over the last two years. The report notes that this new growth is primarily driven by huge new contracts for Palantir, a data analytics company central to ICE's enforcement operations, and Anduril, a defense company that has built AI-powered surveillance systems, tech-infused border towers, drones, and sensors.
The sweeping analysis, produced by immigration rights organization Mijente, legal advocates Just Futures Law, and research group Surveillance Resistance Lab, comes as a large influx of money has made ICE the best-funded law enforcement agency in the U.S. and supercharged immigration agencies' surveillance ambitions.
Diverse Surveillance Tools and Services
The report highlights how ICE is directing taxpayer funds toward multimillion-dollar federal contracts for a diverse group of tools and services. These include data brokers, analytics software, social media scrapers, facial recognition technologies, hacking devices and spyware to break into phones, external contractors characterized as "bounty hunters," and "autonomous" border towers and drones.
The report also details how the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE and CBP, not only buys surveillance products but also operates a billion-dollar incubator and funds research, programs, and partnerships that actively shape the tech created. The authors note that this money has been crucial in "providing early funding for companies that go on to be major surveillance technology providers."
Funding Startups and Research
These initiatives include the Silicon Valley Innovation Partnership, which provides up to $2 million to startups for prototyping, and the DHS component of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, which channels federal money toward technology-focused startups and small businesses to help them become commercially viable. According to the study, the program has provided a total of $845 million across 500 companies since 2004. The Trump administration has awarded money through SBIR in recent years for tools that would allow agents to harvest biometric data from cellphones and use AI to analyze airport CCTV feeds and automatically catalog passengers' physical characteristics.
DHS did not respond to a request for comment before publication.
Concerns Over Oversight and Civil Rights
Paromita Shah, executive director of Just Futures Law and one of the report's authors, expressed worries about the lack of oversight. "I am worried about an agency that has little oversight from Congress and internally receiving what's essentially a slush fund," Shah said. "We have seen what CBP and ICE can do with a huge influx of money already – and how many civil rights violations are occurring on the ground."
Shah also highlighted concerns about AI and facial recognition. "DHS has publicly disclosed that it uses more than 10 AI-enabled facial recognition tools. This kind of street-level surveillance raises questions about consent and whether a warrant was obtained," she said. "How many times have we seen ICE and CBP agents snapping pictures of us and downloading it into some kind of system?"
Circular Nature of Funding
Shah noted the problematic circular nature of DHS funding and testing surveillance tools. "It shows the circular nature of the process – and it's also concerning because DHS doesn't care if it violates rights, they just want to deploy the tech," she said. "There's also an assumption they're giving funding to baby companies. That's true sometimes, but occasionally that money is going to bigger ones." The report notes that Anduril was able to get SBIR money in 2020, even though it was valued at around $2 billion.
Regarding Palantir's central role, Shah said, "It's troubling that Palantir could have the power to define what counts as lawful and what doesn't, what is privacy and what is not." A Palantir spokesperson stated that the company "is not in the business of collecting or storing data, we do not conduct surveillance, and we are not involved in setting immigration policies."
Less High-Profile Surveillance Tools
Shah also pointed to less high-profile surveillance tools, such as Equifax acting as a key data broker. "What surprised me was learning that Equifax was a key data broker that may not do direct work with ICE, but certainly shares data with them," she said. Equifax did not respond to a request for comment.
Other tools include Berla iVe, which helps law enforcement extract data from devices connected to cars; the VeriWatch, a smartwatch that tracks migrants awaiting immigration proceedings; and Tangles, which uses AI to create dossiers based on people's online presence.
Influence of Tech Executives and Venture Capital
Shah emphasized the importance of tracking how tech executives and venture capital influence Trump's immigration agenda. "People need to realize that DHS is not merely a police force – but we're standing in a moment where tech oligarchs have captured key parts of the DHS budget and are using it to fund their own companies," she said.
When asked about hidden spending, Shah replied, "There's a lot the government is not sharing with us. I'm absolutely sure we're missing things and that is the point: we should be worried."
