United States immigration authorities are moving to dramatically expand their social media surveillance, with plans to hire nearly 30 contractors to sift through posts, photos, and messages—raw material to be transformed into intelligence for deportation raids and arrests.
Federal contracting records reviewed by WIRED show that the agency is seeking private vendors to run a multiyear surveillance program out of two of its little-known targeting centers. The program envisions stationing nearly 30 private analysts at Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities in Vermont and Southern California. Their job: Scour Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and other platforms, converting posts and profiles into fresh leads for enforcement raids.
The initiative is still at the request-for-information stage, a step agencies use to gauge interest from contractors before an official bidding process. But draft planning documents show the scheme is ambitious: ICE wants a contractor capable of staffing the centers around the clock, constantly processing cases on tight deadlines, and supplying the agency with the latest and greatest subscription-based surveillance software.
The facilities at the heart of this plan are two of ICE’s three targeting centers, responsible for producing leads that feed directly into the agency’s enforcement operations. The National Criminal Analysis and Targeting Center sits in Williston, Vermont. It handles cases across much of the eastern US. The Pacific Enforcement Response Center, based in Santa Ana, California, oversees the western region and is designed to run 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Internal planning documents show that each site would be staffed with a mix of senior analysts, shift leads, and rank-and-file researchers. Vermont would see a team of a dozen contractors, including a program manager and 10 analysts. California would host a larger, nonstop watch floor with 16 staff. At all times, at least one senior analyst and three researchers would be on duty at the Santa Ana site.
Together, these teams would operate as intelligence arms of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division. They will receive tips and incoming cases, research individuals online, and package the results into dossiers that could be used by field offices to plan arrests.
The scope of information contractors are expected to collect is broad. Draft instructions specify open-source intelligence: public posts, photos, and messages on platforms from Facebook to Reddit to TikTok. Analysts may also be tasked with checking more obscure or foreign-based sites, such as Russia’s VKontakte.
They would also be armed with powerful commercial databases such as LexisNexis Accurint and Thomson Reuters CLEAR, which knit together property records, phone bills, utilities, vehicle registrations, and other personal details into searchable files.
The plan calls for strict turnaround times. Urgent cases, such as suspected national security threats or people on ICE’s Top Ten Most Wanted list, must be researched within 30 minutes. High-priority cases get one hour; lower-priority leads must be completed within the workday. ICE expects at least three-quarters of all cases to meet those deadlines, with top contractors hitting closer to 95 percent.
The plan goes beyond staffing. ICE also wants algorithms, asking contractors to spell out how they might weave artificial intelligence into the hunt—a solicitation that mirrors other recent proposals. The agency has also set aside more than a million dollars a year to arm analysts with the latest surveillance tools.
ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Earlier this year, The Intercept revealed that ICE had floated plans for a system that could automatically scan social media for “negative sentiment” toward the agency and flag users thought to show a “proclivity for violence.” Procurement records previously reviewed by 404 Media identified software used by the agency to build dossiers on flagged individuals, compiling personal details, family links, and even using facial recognition to connect images across the web. Observers warned it was unclear how such technology could distinguish genuine threats from political speech.