‘We should be worried’: report sheds light on ICE’s booming arsenal of hi-tech surveillance tools
TL;DR
A new report by Mijente, Just Futures Law and Surveillance Resistance Lab reviewed ICE and CBP contracts with 11 surveillance-tech companies. Awarded money rose to just over $310m in 2025 and hit $513m in 2026. The biggest drivers are described as new or expanded deals for Palantir and Anduril. The toolkit named in the report includes data brokers, analytics platforms, social media scrapers, facial recognition, phone-hacking tools, drones, sensors and autonomous border towers.
Nauti's Take
The worrying part is not simply that ICE buys modern software. It is that a procurement market is forming where state enforcement, venture-backed surveillance firms and AI tooling reinforce each other.
The report comes from an advocacy-heavy corner, so its framing should be read with that in mind. But the contract figures, vendors and tool categories are concrete enough that dismissing this as vague tech panic would be lazy.
Briefingshow
This is about more than one controversial vendor or one immigration agency. AI surveillance becomes powerful when brokered data, biometrics, drones, analytics platforms and contractors are wired into daily enforcement. Once those systems are funded, tested and embedded, oversight tends to arrive late, while the operational machinery keeps expanding.
Sources