As ICE ramps up its attempts to locate and deport undocumented immigrants, it’s faced a massive backlash in some parts of the U.S., including protests and, on occasion, attacks of ICE agents.
Now, to identify people who have assaulted agents, ICE has turned to Clearview AI, a provider of a controversial facial recognition technology that compares images of people to a massive database of face images scraped from social media and other public websites.
For years, ICE has used Clearview AI in child exploitation investigations, but contract records now make clear its remit for using the tool goes further. According to a public contract record identified by Forbes, ICE bought the tech this month to support Homeland Security Investigations with “capabilities of identifying victims and offenders in child sexual exploitation cases and assaults against law enforcement officers.”
“The technology will quickly become a part of President Trump's war on undocumented families.”
The contract, signed last week, is worth $9.2 million, which is Clearview’s biggest award from any government department to date. Its second biggest was another ICE contract signed in 2021, worth $2.3 million.
Neither Clearview nor ICE responded to requests for comment at the time of publication.
“At a moment when the government is charging protesters who throw food with felony assault, it's clear that this tech will just become another way to silence dissent,” said Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project. “No matter what ICE claims today, I have no doubt the technology will quickly become a part of President Trump's war on undocumented families.”
In recent years, Clearview was fined over $50 million by various regulators in both the U.K. and Europe for breaching privacy rules by mass-scraping images of people’s faces without their consent. Earlier this year, the company’s founder Hoan Ton-That was removed from the company’s board, having stepped down as CEO last year, after it emerged the company was struggling to get federal contracts or secure more funding.
ICE has an abundance of surveillance tech to use as part of its President Trump-mandated deportation drive. One is another facial recognition tool, Mobile Fortify, currently being used by the agency to identify undocumented individuals. It’s similar to the system used by Customs Border Protection when entering the country, per reporting from independent publication 404 Media, which first reported ICE’s new Clearview contract.
ICE has also recently purchased mobile spyware from Israeli-founded company Paragone Solutions, wiretapping systems from Pen-Link and phone forensics tools from Cellebrite and rival Magnet. Contracting records show a recent spate of purchases of Magnet’s Android and iPhone forensics tool known as Graykey, including nearly $150,000 worth of orders in the last three weeks.