ICE Eyes New Social Media Intelligence Program to Support Deportations With Round-the-Clock Monitoring: Report

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is preparing to dramatically expand its social media surveillance capabilities by hiring nearly 30 private contractors to analyze posts, photos, and online messages and convert them into intelligence for arrests and deportation raids, according to new documents reviewed by Wired.

The plan would establish round-the-clock monitoring at two ICE targeting centers—one in Williston, Vermont, and another in Santa Ana, California—where private analysts would scour public data from Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Reddit, among other sites.

The resulting dossiers would feed directly into ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations division, supplying field offices with leads for enforcement actions, according to Wired.

Each center would operate continuously, with Vermont hosting 12 contractors and California 16, including analysts, shift leads, and program managers. According to planning documents, urgent cases such as national-security threats would have to be processed within 30 minutes, while high-priority cases would have one hour. Contractors are required to use ICE-approved systems and may not create fake profiles or store data outside government servers.

The initiative remains in the "request for information" phase but outlines an ambitious effort to merge open-source data with commercial databases such as LexisNexis Accurint and Thomson Reuters CLEAR. ICE is also asking vendors to integrate artificial-intelligence tools into their workflow to accelerate targeting and case development.

ICE argues it needs these tools to modernize enforcement methods. Its planning documents note that "previous approaches ... which have not incorporated open web sources and social media information, have had limited success." The agency suggests that tapping social media and open web data helps identify aliases, track movements, and detect patterns that traditional methods often miss.

The surveillance push follows a series of controversial technology contracts over the tast few weeks. Back in early September El País reported that ICE reinstated a $2 million deal with Paragon Solutions for spyware known as Graphite, capable of infiltrating encrypted apps and remotely activating device microphones. Civil-liberties advocates have said the software could expose sensitive communications from asylum seekers and immigrant-rights groups.

Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security is preparing to roll out a new AI-driven enforcement platform called ImmigrationOS, developed under a nearly $30 million contract with Palantir Technologies. The system integrates multiple data streams to identify potential targets and guide agents' actions during raids and deportations, part of what officials have described as a "streamlined digital ecosystem" for immigration enforcement.