Overview
- Politico reports the Trump administration authorized ICE to spend roughly $300 million on AI‑enabled surveillance, including social‑media monitoring, facial recognition, license‑plate readers and phone‑location tools.
- An internal ICE draft obtained by The Washington Post outlines a two‑tier system with 16 processing hubs and seven large warehouse‑style sites holding 5,000–10,000 people each, totaling more than 80,000 beds.
- ICE plans to share the detention blueprint with private contractors for feedback, and proposed locations cluster near logistics hubs in Virginia, Texas, Louisiana, Arizona, Georgia and Missouri.
- Acting director Todd M. Lyons framed the effort as a logistics upgrade, saying the agency needs to treat operations more like a business and likening the goal to an Amazon Prime‑style model.
- Democratic governors in New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Washington have suspended ICE access to motor‑vehicle records, while advocates warn the tools and skip‑tracing services could expand domestic surveillance beyond immigration enforcement.