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 management, consulting, and outsourcing firm that provides technical and planning support to US Customs and Border Protection (CBP)

One of the world’s largest IT companies. Its subsidiary Google provides software and cloud services to US immigration authorities as well as the Israeli government and military and discriminates against Palestinians.

The world’s largest online retailer and cloud storage provider. It’s the largest provider of cloud computing for US immigration authorities as well as the Israeli government and military, and also supports prison and police surveillance.

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

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

France

A French IT and engineering firm, which helps US immigration authorities optimize their incarceration and deportations

An Israeli digital intelligence firm that supplies law enforcement agencies, prison authorities, border security agencies, and 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 US-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 world's fifth–largest military company. It manufactures weapons used by the Israeli military against Palestinian civilians and surveillance technology which is used to monitor the U.S.-Mexico border and surveil immigrant communities.

One of the world's largest IT companies. A major contractor for U.S. immigration authorities. Runs the discriminatory Israeli population registry and provides technologies to the Israeli military.

A US-based military company that provides phone tracking devices and other equipment to US immigration authorities and the Israeli military. Used to provide surveillance technologies for the US-Mexico border and Israeli military checkpoints.

A US 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. Leading supplier of license plate recognition software. Sells surveillance products for use at US prisons, at the US-Mexico Border, and by US police agencies. Its equipment is installed in illegal settlements and in the separation wall in the West Bank and is used by the Israeli military, police, and prison service.

Japan

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

The world's fourth-largest military company. It manufactures multiple weapon systems used by the Israeli military against Palestinian civilians, and was instrumental in developing ICE's deportation machine.

USA

A U.S. military and government contractor that provides maintenance to the aircraft fleet used to monitor the US borders and beyond

A US-based high-tech surveillance company. Designed systems for US immigration authorities to surveil and target immigrants and to manage mass immigration raids. Its predictive policing tools are used by law enforcement agencies and by Israeli security forces.

A UK-based information and analytics firm. Its subsidiary LexisNexis provides data analytics to US immigration authorities to identify and locate persons targeted for deportation.

A US cloud computing and AI company whose systems power the US Unified Immigration Portal

A US military and intelligence contractor, which has enhanced data sharing between US immigration authorities and local law enforcement agencies.

France

A French multinational that designs and manufactures electrical systems for the aerospace and defense industries. Supplies biometric technologies for the databases used to surveil immigrants in the US.

A US pharmaceutical and biotech company that provides equipment for mass DNA testing of people detained by US immigration authorities and Rapid DNA testing of migrant families at the US-Mexico border

A Canadian data broker and information services provider that provides systems and databases to the US immigration authorities for tracking and targeting immigrant communities

A credit rating agency and data broker that provides customized software and services to law enforcement and US immigration authorities

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.

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