A new report has laid bare the unprecedented growth of the U.S. government's immigration surveillance arsenal, revealing that Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection awarded more than $513 million in surveillance technology contracts in 2026.The figure marks a dramatic escalation from just over $310 million in 2025 and less than $50 million a decade ago, according to an analysis of contracts with 11 surveillance technology companies.
The report, released this week by immigration rights organization Mijente, legal advocates Just Futures Law, and research group Surveillance Resistance Lab, traces the contracts as far back as 2013. It found that funding awarded to these firms has increased steadily over time, with a particularly sharp jump over the last two years. The growth is being driven primarily by massive new contracts for two companies: Palantir, the data analytics company that has become central to ICE's enforcement operations, and Anduril, a defense contractor that builds AI-powered surveillance systems, tech-infused border towers, drones and sensors.
The Tech Behind ICE
The sweeping analysis maps out the top 10 categories of surveillance technology used by DHS, ICE, and CBP to target, criminalize, and deport immigrants. These include data brokers like LexisNexis that sell information on millions of people to ICE, which then uses the data to circumvent sanctuary city protections. Data analytics companies, first among them Palantir, sort and analyze the data. The report calls Palantir 'the backbone of ICE data surveillance.'
Palantir, a military contractor founded through CIA venture capital firm In-Q-Tel, has developed both ImmigrationOS and ELITE — software platforms that track migrants and map neighborhoods and potential deportation targets. Since the start of President Donald Trump's second term, Palantir has received over $1.8 billion in government funding, including $81 million from ICE in 2025 and $97 million from ICE in 2026, followed by a $1 billion purchase agreement this year.
Other surveillance tools in ICE's arsenal include web scraping and social media surveillance; facial recognition and biometric identification; technology that surveils vehicles and drivers; cellphone tracking and location data; and drone surveillance. The report also reveals that DHS does not simply purchase technologies once they have been developed, but actively helps shape the innovation ecosystem that produces the surveillance and enforcement technologies it seeks to deploy, through a billion-dollar incubator that funds research and partnerships with companies as they develop their surveillance technology.
Privacy and Civil Liberties Concerns
Civil rights advocates have raised alarm over the sweeping expansion of surveillance capabilities. The report comes as a large influx of money has made ICE the best-funded law enforcement agency in the United States, supercharging immigration agencies' surveillance ambitions. Critics warn that enforcement is becoming a data-driven dragnet that pulls information from medical, tax, credit and benefit systems and combines it into targeting tools.
Privacy advocates also express concern that once such surveillance machinery exists, it rarely stays limited to one group. A system built to track immigrants can just as easily be used to monitor protesters, activists, journalists and U.S. citizens. The report's authors argue that the growing partnership between surveillance tech companies and immigration enforcement represents a fundamental threat to democracy, as billions of taxpayer dollars are diverted to build a sophisticated surveillance infrastructure that operates with little public scrutiny.
