ICE surveillance tech spending hits record $513M, report finds

Spending on surveillance technology by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has soared to a record $513 million in 2026, more than doubling from the previous year, according to a new report from immigration rights and legal advocacy groups.

The report, released this week by Mijente, Just Futures Law and the Surveillance Resistance Lab, analyzed ICE and Customs and Border Protection contracts with 11 companies that provide surveillance technology. It found that total contract awards rose from just over $310 million in 2025 to $513 million in 2026, a record high, driven largely by new contracts with data analytics firm Palantir and defense contractor Anduril.

Researchers traced the contracts back to 2013, when they totaled under $50 million, and found a steady increase over time, with a larger jump over the last two years. The report notes that the new growth is primarily driven by huge new contracts for Palantir, which is central to ICE’s enforcement operations, and Anduril, which has built AI-powered surveillance systems, tech-infused border towers, drones and sensors.

The report comes as a large influx of money has made ICE the best-funded law enforcement agency in the U.S., and has supercharged immigration agencies’ surveillance ambitions, according to the authors.

The report highlights how ICE is directing taxpayer funds toward multimillion-dollar federal contracts for a diverse group of tools and services, including data brokers, analytics software, social media scrapers, facial recognition technologies, hacking devices and spyware to break into phones, external contractors the study’s authors characterize as “bounty hunters,” and “autonomous” border towers and drones.

The report also details how the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE and CBP, does not just buy surveillance products but also operates a billion-dollar incubator and funds research, programs and partnerships that actively shape the technology that is 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.”

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 program, which channels federal money toward technology-focused startups and small businesses so they can become commercially viable. The SBIR program has provided a total of $845 million across 500 companies since 2004, according to the study. 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.

The Guardian spoke with Paromita Shah, executive director of Just Futures Law and one of the report’s authors, about the government’s expansive use of surveillance tech.

Shah said she is worried about “an agency that has little oversight from Congress and internally receiving what’s essentially a slush fund.” She said the report’s authors 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.” She said the agencies are “building the capability to do a new type of invasive surveillance based on this new domestic terrorism memo that sets up the infrastructure to surveil people the US considers to be anti-American.”

On the use of facial recognition, Shah noted that DHS has publicly disclosed that it uses more than 10 AI-enabled facial recognition tools. She said this kind of street-level surveillance “raises questions about consent and whether a warrant was obtained.” She said it “seems as though DHS is creating a database of people who object to their actions.” ICE has denied that it maintains “any kind of database of US citizens protesting ICE activities.”

Shah said the report shows “the circular nature of the process” in which DHS funds and tests surveillance tools, and that “DHS doesn’t care if it violates rights, they just want to deploy the tech.” She noted that Anduril was able to receive SBIR money in 2020 even though it was valued at around $2 billion at the time.

On Palantir’s role, Shah said it is “troubling that Palantir could potentially have the power to define what counts as lawful and what doesn’t, what is privacy and what is not.” A Palantir spokesperson said in an emailed statement 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.”

Shah said she was surprised to learn that Equifax was a key data broker that “may not do direct work with ICE but certainly shares data with them.” Equifax did not respond to a request for comment. The Guardian previously reported that ICE has paid for access to data from Appriss, a company owned by Equifax.

Shah also highlighted DHS’s drone program, saying it is “frightening” to consider what it means “to have a drone floating outside your window and looking into your home v an agent who has to come to your door and ask for permission to come in.” She said the report details tools including Berla iVE, which helps law enforcement extract data from devices connected to cars; VeriWatch, which tracks migrants waiting for immigration proceedings; and Tangles, which uses AI to create dossiers based on people’s online presence.

Shah said 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 there is “a lot the government is not sharing with us” about its spending on surveillance tech, adding: “I’m absolutely sure we’re missing things and that is the point: we should be worried.”