High-Tech Surveillance of Immigrants

The High Tech Surveillance of Immigrants category focuses on mass surveillance within the U.S., surveillance that often leads to the arrest, jailing, and deportation of immigrants. This includes the companies that supply the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and particularly its agency Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with:

  • Databases and case management tools used to identify and track people, like Palantir’s Investigative Case Management and Northrop Grumman’s HART biometric database
  • Cloud infrastructure that powers these data systems, most notably Amazon’s
  • Biometric collection and matching technologies such as face and iris matching algorithms by NEC Corporation
  • Access to law enforcement and commercial databases that collect information on all U.S. residents, such as data brokers Thomson Reuters and RELX

For more information on this industry, see here.

The list of companies involved in this sector
Select private companies are listed below publicly-traded companies.
(!) symbol means this company is on our divestment list
Publicly-Traded Companies
Ireland

An Irish multinational professional services firm that provides technical and planning support to CBP and ICE.

Google’s parent company. It provides cloud computing services and other technologies to the Israeli and US militaries, US immigration authorities, and electronic monitoring companies.

The world’s largest online retailer and cloud storage provider. It is the main provider of cloud infrastructure and services for the Israeli government and military, US immigration authorities, and US prisons and police.

A US government IT contractor, which developed cloud analytics services for US immigration authorities to track and target immigrants.

A US-based government contractor that provides computer and IT services to US immigration authorities and other federal agencies.

France

A French IT and engineering firm that provides US immigration authorities with IT solutions used to support deportations.

An Israeli digital intelligence firm that supplies police, prison, and immigration authorities, as well as repressive regimes around the world, with hacking technologies.

A US-based producer of surveillance tools that provides video management systems for monitoring prisons, jails, and the U.S.–Mexico border.

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.

The fifth-largest military contractor in the world. It manufactures weapons that are used by the Israeli military against Palestinian civilians and surveillance technology that is used to monitor and surveil the U.S.–Mexico border and immigrant communities.

A US weapons manufacturer that provides phone tracking devices and other equipment to the Israeli military and US immigration authorities. It used to provide surveillance technologies for use along the US–Mexico border and at Israeli military checkpoints.

A US-based military IT contractor that provides imaging technologies and biometric systems to US immigration authorities for border monitoring and surveillance.

A Swedish data extraction firm that provides digital forensics tools to law enforcement and immigration authorities.

One of the world’s largest IT companies. Provides tools and infrastructure used by the US government to surveil immigrant communities and to manage prisons. Divested AnyVision for surveilling Palestinians but keeps providing services to the Israeli police.

A US-based communications and surveillance company. Its surveillance products are used in US prisons, along the US–Mexico border, and by US police departments. Its equipment is installed in illegal Israeli settlements and along the separation wall in the occupied West Bank and is used by the Israeli military, police, and prison service.

Japan

A Japanese IT company that provides US immigration authorities with biometric technologies used to target immigrant communities.

A US-based high-tech surveillance company whose big data AI tools are used by Israeli security forces and U.S. law and immigration enforcement agencies.

A UK-based data broker and information services provider. Its subsidiary LexisNexis provides US immigration authorities with systems used to track and target immigrant communities and sells legal databases to prisons and jails.

A US-based cloud computing and AI company whose systems power the Unified Immigration Portal, a database used by US immigration enforcement agencies to monitor and surveil immigrants.

A US military and intelligence contractor that provides license plate readers and other surveillance technologies to US immigration authorities.

France

A French IT and military company that designs biometric and identification management systems for US and European immigration authorities.

A US-based pharmaceutical and biotech company that provides US immigration authorities with equipment for mass DNA testing of detained immigrants and Rapid DNA testing of migrant families at the US–Mexico border.

A Canadian data broker and information services provider whose systems and databases are used by US immigration authorities to target and track immigrants.

A US-based credit rating agency and data broker that provides risk mitigation services to immigration authorities and customized software to law enforcement agencies.

Private Companies

A joint venture of several IT companies contracted in 2020 for five years of service to facilitate Homeland Security Investigation's usage of the Communications for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), which requires telecom companies to help law enforcement wiretap their networks.

Berla, in collaboration with MSAB, makes vehicle forensics kits that CBP uses to extract personal information from cars' infotainment and navigation systems. The system can extract contact lists, messages, pictures, and recent destinations from any synchronized mobile devices.

A biometrics company that has conducted DNA analysis and testing of immigrants since 2014. Since 2019, Bode has provided CBP and ICE with Rapid DNA testing services using Thermo Fisher's RapidHIT ID system.

Provides law enforcement agencies, including ICE since 2019, with a tool that indexes images from online sources and matches them with facial images in law enforcement databases.

New York

Dataminr provides real-time alerts from social media and other public data sources to law enforcement, and this information is shared with DHS through its fusion centers.

One of the world's largest consulting firms, with multiple large contracts with ICE and CBP, including for optimizing their immigrant detention capabilities and for developing the Unified Immigration Portal (UIP), using Salesforce technology, to facilitate information sharing across DHS agencies.

Dev Technology is the main contractor for DHS' Enforcement Integrated Database (EID), which contains biometric and other information collected by ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations agents and is shared with CBP, other federal agencies, and the government of Mexico. The company also has contracts with CBP for biometric application development.

California

Developed and operates COPLINK, a system used to facilitate information sharing between local law enforcement and federal agencies including ICE. Forensic Logic had a contract with ICE for access to law enforcement data from 2018 to 2020.

Virginia

During 2014-2022, ICE used Giant Oak Search Technology (GOST), originally developed for the military, to mine social media content for the purpose of automatically assessing people's "threat level" and flag them for increased surveillance, arrest, or deportation.

Georgia

Owned by private equity firm Peak Equity Partners, Grayshift provides its GrayKey system to ICE and CBP for extracting data from cell phones. In 2019, Grayshift partnered with Magnet Forensics to make GrayKey available to more law enforcement.

Owned by private equity firm Advent International, IDEMIA creates automated biometrics systems for governments around the world, including the US, since 2005.

Since 2014, JDL Digital Systems has provided support and equipment for the Video Evidence Collection and Distribution System (VECADS) used by ICE and CBP. The company develops standalone security cameras as well as video recording and time management equipment for aircraft, drones, and vehicles.

A Canadian software company that sells phone-hacking and data analysis software to US immigration authorities and other law enforcement agencies.

Virginia

Noblis provides systems engineering and technical assistance to DHS, testing and evaluating new DHS technologies. The company has provided biometric support services to DHS in the past, and DHS plans to use Noblis facial recognition technology to target suspected members of gangs.

Virginia

A US-based military and government contractor that has provided maintenance and logistical services to Custom and Border Protection’s fleet of aircraft used for surveilling the US–Mexico border. It was acquired by private company Amentum in 2022, bringing it into the private sector.

Nebraska

A communications data analysis company that mines data including phone usage, social media, and internet communications to track people in real time. These data, which Pen-Link has provided to ICE and CBP since at least 2008, is integrated into the Palantir-designed Investigative Case Management (ICM) system.

A forensics and biometrics company that, since 2019, consults DHS on optimizing its analysis of rapid DNA tests taken from immigrants at the US-Mexico border.

Virginia

Since 2019, Venntel has provided ICE and CBP with its database of people's locations based on mining smartphone app data.

This page was last updated on
15 October 2021