A US-based credit reporting agency and data broker that provides US immigration authorities with information that enables them to locate people targeted for deportation.
Equifax Inc, headquartered in Atlanta, is a data broker and one of three major credit reporting companies in the U.S. The company collects information on millions of U.S. residents, including from their employers, on their credit history, financial assets, utility payments, employment, income, and more. It then provides this information to its clients to condition access to credit, mortgages, child support, and social services.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) uses or has used multiple Equifax databases, mainly through third-party platforms like LexisNexis Accurint and Thomson Reuters CLEAR, to locate people targeted for arrest or deportation. Between 2005 and September 2024, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) awarded Equifax contracts worth at least $16.1 million. During this same period, the U.S. federal government’s contracts with the company totaled over $365 million.
Since early 2021, ICE has used a database called Justice Intelligence (formerly JusticeXchange), a product of Equifax subsidiary and data broker Appriss Insights. This database collects, and makes easily searchable, real-time incarceration release data from thousands of U.S. jails and prisons. ICE uses this information to learn the release dates of individuals it targets for deportation. The agency has access to Justice Intelligence as an add-on to its LexisNexis Accurint subscription.
ICE has used Justice Intelligence to circumvent state and local sanctuary policies that prevent local law enforcement from cooperating with the agency. In its justification for its contract with Equifax, ICE noted that “policy or legislative changes” have caused “an increase in the number of law enforcement agencies and state or local governments that do not share information about real time incarceration of foreign-born nationals with ICE. Therefore, it is critical to have access to Justice Intelligence services through LexisNexis' Appriss Insights.” In other words, through their privatization of data sharing, Equifax and LexisNexis provide ICE with backdoor access to data that continues to enable its targeting of immigrants.
In a 2021 solicitation document, ICE stated that Appriss Insights was paramount for “Enforcement and Removals Office (ERO) [the ICE branch responsible for carrying out deportations] mission of tracking real time incarceration information of suspected foreign-born nationals,” and claimed that its Justice Intelligence platform had access “to over 2,800 jails and correctional facilities.” The real-time booking and release data provided by Appriss is particularly important to ICE, as it allows the agency to locate and detain people when they are released from local jails and state prisons, even if said jail or prison does not respect “immigration detainers” issued by ICE to hold people for up to an additional 48 hours so that the agency may take them into custody.
Other clients of the Justice Intelligence database include some of the fusion centers of DHS. These centers share local law enforcement data with DHS, which includes ICE and other federal law enforcement agencies. For example, Justice Intelligence is used by the Austin Regional Intelligence Center (ARIC), a DHS fusion center that shares data across 10 counties in Central Texas.
In addition, a 2020 Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) document outlined DHS’s use of “commercial data aggregators,” such as Equifax, in its Counterintelligence Program. This program is a department-wide “effort to detect, deter, and disrupt foreign intelligence threats.” Both CBP and ICE are part of the initiative and will have access to the program’s data.
Immigrant Surveillance – Past Activity
Until 2021, ICE used Equifax’s utility providers’ data as part of its use of Thomson Reuters’ Consolidated Lead Evaluation and Reporting (CLEAR) investigative software database. CLEAR obtained “more than 400 million names, addresses and service records from more than 80 utility companies,” in addition to credit data covering some 352 million records, including names, addresses, and Social Security numbers, from Equifax.
Equifax obtained these data from the National Consumer Telecom & Utilities Exchange (NCTUE), an organization of the largest telecom and utilities companies in the U.S. NCTUE was established by the telecom industry in 1997, and its database has been operated by Equifax ever since. The platform allows companies to evaluate individuals’ creditworthiness and share address information for “skip tracing,” i.e., locating people with missed payments. NCTUE members point out that the platform has been particularly useful for locating and identifying “underserved, underbanked, multicultural consumers,” a demographic that overlaps with those targeted by ICE. These data have therefore allowed ICE to locate undocumented immigrants who pay utility bills.
Federal laws regulate how the U.S. federal government can use and acquire data, but do not cover privately owned databases like CLEAR. As a result, more U.S. law enforcement agencies have turned to such private data sources.
In December 2021, NCTUE agreed to stop selling personal data to companies like Equifax, which then sold it for use in databases like CLEAR.