Overview
- New reporting describes an ICE plan for round-the-clock monitoring of platforms such as Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Reddit, with a Targeting Operations Division generating profiles from publicly available posts, images and location data.
- The expansion builds on Trump administration authorization for roughly $300 million in surveillance procurement, including social-media monitoring tools, facial recognition, automatic license-plate readers and services to locate home and work addresses, with AI used to analyze large data sets.
- A November 1 DHS solicitation seeks open-source intelligence support, including analysts at ICE sites in Williston, Vermont, and Santa Ana, California, as the agency formalizes continuous digital tracking capabilities.
- ICE has shifted toward community-based arrests, with 67,800 out-of-custody detentions between June and mid-October, as critics note many detainees lack criminal convictions and DHS emphasizes a focus on offenders.
- States such as New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Washington have curbed ICE access to motor-vehicle data, while Texas’s SB-8 takes effect January 1, 2026, requiring county jail cooperation through 287(g) agreements with state grant incentives, and an internal ICE draft to create large detention megacenters remains under consideration.