ICE’s migrant hunt expands to social media

Instagram profiles could soon be used to justify deportations. U.S. immigration authorities are seeking to hire dozens of analysts to gather personal information from posts, comments and messages on Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, X and other social media platforms, which will be used as leads and intelligence to carry out raids and operations against immigrants. The initiative, part of a series of recent contracts with technology companies, seeks to expand Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) ability to monitor people through their social media to levels that threaten to violate constitutional rights.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has issued a solicitation seeking private companies to deploy at least 30 analysts to ICE monitoring centers in Williston, Vermont, near Canada, and in Santa Ana, California. The request is for a round-the-clock surveillance operation using the latest technology, including artificial intelligence, to support efforts to increase deportations. The government is requesting “analysis and lead generation services” that “fulfill ICE’s law enforcement mission” to locate those who “pose a threat to national security.”

The information collected will come from commercial and law enforcement databases, as well as other publicly accessible sources, including open media and social media platforms, whose monitoring will be integrated into ICE’s workflow. The documents also indicate that AI will increase the efficiency of identifying individuals.

The initiative is part of the Trump administration’s historic immigration offensive, which has promised mass deportations and set daily arrest quotas of, according to numerous reports, up to 3,000 people per day, a figure that has not been reached to date. Even so, as a result of Trump’s immigration policy, ICE has become the most powerful agency in the federal government, with access to data from other agencies, such as the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Department of Health. Furthermore, it has received billions of dollars — between $70 billion and $170 billion, depending on what is included in the calculation — from the Trump tax reform passed last summer, which establishes a $5.9 billion allocation for “new technology.” By way of comparison, the FBI has a total of just over $10 billion annually.

With that money already at its disposal, ICE has ramped up its large-scale surveillance efforts, including on social media, taking advantage of the massive reach offered by private technology companies. This has raised concerns among civil rights and immigrant rights advocates about the risks this practice poses to freedom of expression, privacy, and democracy.

“Almost anything people post on social media can potentially be used against them. Any post in a WhatsApp group or on a Facebook page can put them on ICE’s radar,” explains Alberto Fox-Cahn, attorney and founder of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP), a civil rights advocacy group focused on government surveillance.

The way ICE is using social media to monitor people “undermines democracy,” he argues. “They’re using a lot of tools to access information that people think is private.” According to the expert, accounts restricted to approved followers only offer a false sense of privacy because “ICE and other law enforcement agencies have created vast networks of fake accounts to harvest information.”

“Many people use WhatsApp, which is encrypted, without realizing that information about every communication they have is available to ICE and other law enforcement agencies,” he added.

A WhatsApp spokesperson said that the app is built to be private by design, with end-to-end encryption “so that no one outside of the chat, not even WhatsApp or Meta, can read, listen to, or share your personal messages.” The spokesperson also said that WhatApp does “not keep logs of who everyone is messaging or calling.”

DHS did not respond to a request for comment for this report. Neither did ICE.

Growing use of technology

The social media monitoring service tender is just the latest in a series of contracts with tech companies aimed at expanding ICE’s surveillance capabilities. This includes a $30 million contract with Palantir, co-founded by controversial far-right billionaire and former Elon Musk partner Peter Thiel, to develop ImmigrationOS, an app that uses AI to identify and locate undocumented immigrants. Palantir has secured more than $900 million in government contracts since Trump began his second term, according to The New York Times.

Studies indicate that the contracts demonstrate an increase in the use of technology, artificial intelligence, and social media analytics to strengthen ICE’s surveillance infrastructure across the country. A report by the immigrant advocacy organization Mijente, titled “Who’s Behind ICE? The Tech and Data Companies Fueling Deportations,” warned in 2023 that ICE is increasingly using cloud infrastructure, data analytics, and social media programs provided by private vendors. The report detailed how social media fuels a framework that expands ICE’s ability to generate leads.

In another more recent report, from August of this year, the American Immigration Council highlights the need for independent audits to oversee these AI-powered systems, which can make mistakes with serious consequences. People can be detained, lose their legal status, or even end up wrongfully deported, the immigrant advocacy organization warns, adding that “some Palantir engineers themselves have raised concerns about the ethical burden of designing these tools. They argue that building systems, especially without sufficient oversight, that are capable of mass surveillance crosses a dangerous line — from protecting the civil liberties that underpin democracy to blatantly undermining them."

STOP’s Fox-Cahn emphasizes the “invasive nature” of the technology and the risk it can pose to migrants. “We know that people are going to be systematically targeted for their political beliefs, their religion, and things that are supposed to be protected by our Constitution.”

Ismael Labrador, a Miami-based immigration attorney, says several clients have expressed concern about their social media posts. After a raid on a Miami nightclub, one client asked him if a photo he posted on Facebook at the club could have alerted authorities. Labrador says he warns his asylum-seeking clients, whom the government “is persecuting,” to be careful about what they post because “any comment that is not aligned with [this administration’s] principles could be misinterpreted.”

Thomas Kennedy of the Florida Immigrant Coalition (FLIC) says government contractors monitoring social media “are going to be looking to see if anyone has posted a political opinion, something hyperbolic” to conduct what they call a “fishing expedition,” a broad and unfounded search with no specific motive.

While the presence of ICE agents in the country’s cities intensifies the situation and pushes immigrants, both documented and undocumented, into the shadows, the shadow of immigration authorities now also looms over cyberspace.

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