A new report sheds light on the unprecedented growth of the US government’s immigration surveillance arsenal, revealing fresh details about how spending on technology and AI tools to find and track migrants has soared to record levels during Donald Trump’s second term.
The report, released this week, analyzed US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) contracts with 11 companies the authors said provide surveillance tech. They found the money awarded to these firms doubled from 2024 to 2025, to just over $310m – and in 2026, that number soared to a record $513m.
Researchers traced these contracts as far back as 2013, when they hovered under $50m, and found a steady increase over time – with a bigger jump over the last two years. The report notes this new growth is primarily driven by huge new contracts for Palantir, a data analytics company that is central to ICE’s enforcement operations, as well as Anduril, a defense company that has built AI-powered surveillance systems, tech-infused border towers, drones and sensors.
The sweeping analysis, which was produced by immigration rights organization Mijente, legal advocates Just Futures Law and research group Surveillance Resistance Lab, comes as a large influx of money has made ICE the best-funded law enforcement agency in the US, and supercharged immigration agencies’ surveillance ambitions.
The report highlights how ICE is directing these taxpayer funds towards multimillion dollar federal contracts for a diverse group of tools and services. They include money for data brokers, analytics software, social media scrapers, facial recognition technologies, hacking devices and spyware to break into phones, external contractors that the study’s authors characterize as “bounty hunters”, “autonomous” border towers and drones.
The report also details how the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE and CBP, doesn’t just buy surveillance products but also operates a billion-dollar incubator and funds research, programs and partnerships that actively shape the tech that’s 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 that provides up to $2m to startups for prototyping, and the DHS component of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR), which channels federal money towards technology-focused startups and small businesses, so they can become commercially viable.
The program has provided a total of $845m across 500 companies since 2004, according to the study. The Trump administration has awarded money through SBIR in recent years for tools…
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