How ICE and Big Tech are Normalizing Mass Surveillance
John C. Yang
President & Executive Director
Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC
Large-scale immigrant surveillance in the U.S. across recent decades would not be possible without Big Tech. Tech companies quietly contribute various technological and logistical infrastructure — everything from databases on immigrants to communications systems — for agencies like U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP). ICE and CBP collectively have approximately $515 million in contracts with Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Palantir; many additional companies have indirect or subcontracted relationships with ICE that are not as well documented.[1]
The tech industry’s enablement of government surveillance for immigration enforcement threatens democracy by normalizing heightened surveillance, escalating the use of biased, imperfect technology, and suppressing dissenting voices. Asian Americans, who have historically been disproportionately targeted by government surveillance and viewed as “perpetual foreigners,” are especially vulnerable to these threats. Tech companies should consider how their active roles in immigration enforcement-related activities directly undermine the safety and wellbeing of their foreign-born workers and contribute to climates of fear and apprehension across the country.[2] Many of these companies’ own employees and the general public have called on these corporations to roll back their involvement in the U.S. government’s immigrant surveillance apparatus.[3],[4] Big Tech should take these concerns seriously. Common-sense reforms like increased transparency around government contracts, delineation of organizational red lines, and anti-retaliation protections for workers will ultimately serve these companies’ best interests and create goodwill among stakeholders like shareholders and customers.
Normalization of mass surveillance:
ICE’s immigration crackdown and the mass surveillance it powers have ingrained surveillance into Americans’ everyday lives. Recent evidence showing the targeting of American citizens as part of this operation underscores that everyone in the U.S., regardless of immigration status, experiences the negative consequences of large-scale monitoring.[5],[6]
Historical examples highlight the perils of the U.S. government spying on its own people. In the lead up to, throughout, and following the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, various federal agencies tracked the daily activities of and compiled files on thousands of individuals of Japanese descent, a majority of whom were U.S. citizens.[7] Beginning in 1967 and into the 1970s, the FBI operated a classified program that surveilled thousands of Chinese scientists and science students through tactics like informants and wiretapping.[8] While these surveillance methodologies are low-tech by today’s standards, they helped to lay the groundwork for racially discriminatory programs like the more recent “China Initiative” and the growth of modern surveillance technology.[9]
Growth of imperfect, often biased, technology:
Surges in immigration enforcement have also led to the explosive growth of various surveillance technologies like biometric tracking, including through facial recognition and fingerprint scanning. Though these types of technology can be beneficial under certain circumstances and with proper guardrails in place, they have troubling historical roots and can be ineffective, particularly on Asian faces.[10] Much of America’s modern biometric security empire can trace its beginnings back to the monitoring of Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian communities after the September 11 terrorist attacks by the then newly created Department of Homeland Security.[11] In the immediate aftermath, biometrics was presented as a “scientific,” evidence-based solution to prevent future atrocities; when the 9/11 Commission published its final report, it urged the installation of biometric screening systems at all U.S. borders. Under the guise of fighting the “War on Terror,” nascent forms of the same technologies deployed against immigrants today were used to surveil and discriminate against Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian communities decades ago. Now, for example, ICE can use facial recognition technology powered by companies like Clearview AI to identify immigrants within a matter of seconds.[12]
Automatic license plate readers represent another disturbing frontier of mass surveillance made possible by tech companies. Flock Safety has allowed ICE to access tens of thousands of its AI-enabled license plate readers across the country.[13] These cameras capture the license plate, make, and model of all passing vehicles; as such, “immigrant” surveillance is increasingly mass domestic surveillance. As the government pumps billions of dollars into these companies that continue to expand their capabilities, Americans become more and more used to scanning their faces to board flights, using their fingerprints to unlock electronic devices, and being constantly monitored by omnipresent security cameras. As Emily Tucker, executive director of the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown Law says, “Immigration powers are being used to justify mass surveillance of everybody.”[14]
Suppression of critical voices:
The latest immigration crackdown has also highlighted First Amendment concerns. Google (whose parent company Alphabet owns YouTube), Meta, and Reddit have complied with DHS subpoenas looking to identify users on its platforms who have been critical of ICE.[15] Apple and Google have also removed apps like ICEBlock that track the presence of ICE agents in neighborhoods from their app stores.[16] Similar reporting has identified documents outlining ICE plans to hire contractors to scan social media platforms like X, Facebook, and Instagram to identify individuals for deportation.[17] And under a new rule by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), any individual applying for a change in immigration status (e.g., someone seeking a green card or applying for citizenship) must present their social media handles, as well as those of their family members, to the government.[18] These examples show how deeply tech companies have become enmeshed with immigration enforcement efforts by the U.S. government.
Recommendations for tech companies:
- Increase transparency. Tech companies should publish detailed transparency reports that include information such as all federal, state, and local immigration enforcement contracts (including the scope and financial value of these agreements) and the types of information shared with government agencies.
- Establish clear lines in the sand for prohibited uses. These companies should also delineate clear boundaries that prohibit certain uses of their technologies for purposes like dragnet social media monitoring and mass surveillance of people in the United States not tied to individualized suspicion.[19]
- Strengthen anti-retaliation protections. Employees at tech companies who raise concerns about the involvement of their employers with immigration enforcement and other activities through actions like participating in protests or signing open letters to their CEOs should be protected from retaliation.
Recent immigration enforcement operations have been explicitly race-based, targeting those who speak English with an accent, have darker skin, or work certain jobs.[20] This has an outsized negative impact on Asian Americans and other people of color who are consistently otherized and branded as “not fully American,” even if they themselves have legal status in the U.S..[21] The decision of tech companies, who have historically championed progressive values like equality and sustainability, to work directly with ICE’s “deportation machine” is a betrayal of their principles and the very people who keep their businesses afloat. If these companies cannot commit to refusing to work with the current administration’s sweeping mass deportation campaign, then they should — at the very least — be transparent to their employees, customers, shareholders, and other stakeholders about the nature of the services they are providing for these purposes. They should also adopt firm red lines and provide their employees with means of speaking out when they feel their employers have crossed these lines. If major tech giants continue to put profits over people, keep granting the government unfettered access to its technologies, and remain complicit in attacks on immigrant rights, the impacts for all Americans will be devastating.
[1] Carolin Haskins, “All the Ways Big Tech Fuels ICE and CBP,” WIRED (March 3, 2026), https://www.wired.com/story/how-big-tech-is-powering-trumps-immigration-crackdown/.
[2] Alison Snyder, “Foreign-Born STEM Talent Remains Key to U.S. Research,” Axios (March 13, 2024), https://www.axios.com/2024/03/13/us-workforce-foreign-born-stem-research.
[3] Jessica Guynn, “Tech CEOs Have Been Quiet on ICE. Their Workers Want Them to Speak Up,” USA TODAY (Jan. 21, 2026), https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2026/01/21/tech-workers-ice-trump-protest/88285079007/.
[4] #NoTechForICE, “About,” Mijente, https://notechforice.com/about/.
[5] Autumn Billing, “ICE Is Mounting a Mass Surveillance Campaign on American Citizens,” Reason (Oct. 23, 2025), https://reason.com/2025/10/23/ice-is-mounting-a-mass-surveillance-campaign-on-american-citizens/.
[6] Nicole Foy, “We Found That More Than 170 U.S. Citizens Have Been Held by Immigration Agents. They’ve Been Kicked, Dragged and Detained for Days,” ProPublica (Oct, 16, 2025), https://www.propublica.org/article/immigration-dhs-american-citizens-arrested-detained-against-will.
[7] National Archives, “World War II Japanese American Incarceration: Pre-War Surveillance and Planning,” Asian American and Pacific Islander Records at the National Archives (Feb. 13, 2025), https://www.archives.gov/research/aapi/ww2/planning.
[8] Andrea Widener, “70 Years of US Suspicion toward Chinese Scientists — and What Those Caught In the Middle Should Do Now,” Chemical & Engineering News (March 22, 2020), https://cen.acs.org/policy/research-funding/70-years-US-suspicion-toward/98/i11.
[9] Mike German, “The ‘China Initiative’ Failed U.S. Research and National Security. Don’t Bring It Back,” The Brennan Center for Justice (Sept. 23, 2024), https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/china-initiative-failed-us-research-and-national-security-dont-bring-it.
[10] Natasha Singer and Cade Metz, “Many Facial-Recognition Systems Are Biased, Says U.S. Study,” The New York Times (Dec. 19, 2019), https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/19/technology/facial-recognition-bias.html.
[11] Nina Dewi Toft Djanegara, “How 9/11 Sparked the Rise of America’s Biometrics Security Empire,” Fast Company (Sept. 10, 2021), https://www.fastcompany.com/90674661/how-9-11-sparked-the-rise-of-americas-biometrics-security-empire.
[12] Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai and Zack Whittaker, “Here’s the Tech Powering ICE’s Deportation Crackdown,” TechCrunch (Jan. 26, 2026), https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/26/heres-the-tech-powering-ices-deportation-crackdown/.
[13] Jay Stanley, “Flock’s Aggressive Expansions Go Far Beyond Simple Driver Surveillance,” The American Civil Liberties Union Aug. 18, 2025), https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/tracking-alpr-cameras/flock-roundup.
[14] Jude Joffe-Block, “Immigration agents have new technology to identify and track people,” NPR (Nov. 8, 2025), https://www.npr.org/2025/11/08/nx-s1-5585691/ice-facial-recognition-immigration-tracking-spyware.
[15] Kevin Haynes, “Big Tech Confirms DHS Subpoenas: Meta and Google Users Targeted Over Anti-ICE Posts,” Inc. (Feb. 15, 2026), https://www.inc.com/kevin-haynes/big-tech-confirms-dhs-subpoenas-meta-and-google-users-targeted-over-anti-ice-posts/91303363.
[16] Wyatte Grantham-Philips, Matt O’Brien, and Kelvin Chan, “Apple and Google Block Apps that Crowdsource ICE Sightings. Some Warn of Chilling Effects,” AP News (Oct. 3, 2025), https://apnews.com/article/apple-ice-iphone-app-immigration-fb6a404d3e977516d66d470585071bcc.
[17] Dell Cameron, “ICE Wants to Build Out a 24/7 Social Media Surveillance Team,” WIRED (Oct. 3, 2025), https://www.wired.com/story/ice-social-media-surveillance-24-7-contract/.
[18] Julia Malleck, “USCIS Aims to Expand Social Media Surveillance of Immigrants and US Citizens,” Truthout (Feb. 20, 2026), https://truthout.org/articles/uscis-aims-to-expand-social-media-surveillance-of-immigrants-and-us-citizens/.
[19] Katya Schwenk, “ICE Just Spent Millions on a Social Media Surveillance AI Program,” Truthout (Oct. 25, 2025), https://truthout.org/articles/ice-just-spent-millions-on-a-social-media-surveillance-ai-program/.
[20] Erin Mansfield, “Supreme Court said ICE Can Stop You Based on Race, Accent, Job and Location. What We Know,” USA TODAY (Sept. 10, 2025), https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/09/10/immigration-enforcement-stops-race-language-job/86048527007/.
[21] Nicole Foy, “We Found That More Than 170 U.S. Citizens Have Been Held by Immigration Agents. They’ve Been Kicked, Dragged and Detained for Days,” ProPublica (Oct. 16, 2025), https://www.propublica.org/article/immigration-dhs-american-citizens-arrested-detained-against-will.
John C. Yang is the President and Executive Director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC in Washington, D.C., where he leads the organization’s mission to advance the civil and human rights of Asian Americans and to build and promote a fair and equitable society for all through policy advocacy, litigation, education, and community empowerment. Because of his extensive legal experience and expertise, John has testified before Congress and appeared regularly in national media on issues of importance to the Asian American community. He has served in leadership positions for the American Bar Association, the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association, and the National Council of Asian Pacific Americans, among many others. Prior to Advancing Justice | AAJC, John had served as a political appointee in the Obama Administration, the Asia-Pacific Legal Director of a Fortune 200 company, and as a partner at a large D.C.-based law firm. He also serves on the diversity council for several Fortune 500 U.S. companies.