How ICE’s Plan To Monitor Social Media Threatens Not Just Privacy, But Civic Participation

When most people think about immigration enforcement, they picture border crossings and airport checkpoints. But the new front line may be your social media feed.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has published arequest for informationfor private-sector contractors to launch around-the-clock social media monitoring program. The request states that private contractors will bepaid to comb throughFacebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram, VK, Flickr, Myspace, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, Reddit, WhatsApp, YouTube, etc.," turning public posts into enforcement leads that feed directly into ICE's databases.

The request for information reads like something out of a cyber thriller: dozens of analysts working in shifts, strict deadlines measured in minutes, a tiered system of prioritizing high-risk individuals, and the latest software keeping constant watch.

I ama researcherwho studies the intersection of data governance, digital technologies and the U.S. federal government. I believe that the ICE request for information also signals a concerning if logical next step in a longer trend, one that moves the U.S. border from the physical world into the digital.

A new structure of surveillance

ICE alreadysearches social mediausing a service calledSocialNetthat monitors most major online platforms. The agency has alsocontracted with Zignal Labsfor its AI-powered social media monitoring system.

The Customs and Border Protection agencyalso searches social mediaposts on the devices of some travelers at ports of entry, and the U.S. State Department reviews social media posts when foreigners seek visas to enter the United States.

What would change isn't only the scale of monitoring but its structure. Instead of government agents gathering evidence case by case, ICE is building a public-private surveillance loop that transforms everyday online activity into potential evidence.

Private contractors would be tasked with scraping publicly available data to collecting messages, includingposts and other media and data. The contractors would be able to correlate those findings with data in commercial datasets from brokers such asLexisNexis AccurintandThomson Reuters CLEARalong with government-owned databases. Analysts would be required to produce dossiers for ICE field offices within tight deadlines - sometimes just 30 minutes for a high-priority case.

Those files don't exist in isolation. They feed directly intoPalantir Technologies' Investigative Case Management system, the digital backbone of modern immigration enforcement. There, this social media data would join a growing web of license plate scans, utility records, property data and biometrics, creating what is effectively asearchable portrait of a person's life.

Who gets caught in the net?

Officially, ICE says its data collection would focus on people who arealready linked to ongoing cases or potential threats. In practice, the net is far wider.

The danger here is that when one person is flagged, their friends, relatives, fellow organizers or any of their acquaintances can also becomesubjects of scrutiny. Previous contracts forfacial recognition toolsandlocation trackinghave shown how easily these systemsexpand beyond their original scope. What starts as enforcement canturn into surveillanceof entire communities.

What ICE says and what history shows

ICE frames the projectas modernization: a way to identify a target's location by identifying aliases and detecting patterns that traditional methods might miss.Planning documentssay contractors cannot create fake profiles and must store all analysis on ICE servers.

But history suggests these kinds of guardrails often fail. Investigations have revealed howinformal data-sharingbetween local police and federal agents allowed ICE to access systems it wasn't authorized to use. The agency has repeatedlypurchased massive datasetsfrom brokersto sidestep warrant requirements. And despite aWhite House freezeon spyware procurement, ICE quietlyrevived a contractwith Paragon's Graphite tool, software reportedly capable ofinfiltrating encrypted appssuch as WhatsApp and Signal.

Meanwhile, ICE's vendor ecosystem keeps expanding:Clearview AIfor face matching, ShadowDragon'sSocialNetformapping networks,Babel Street'slocation history serviceLocate X, andLexisNexisforlooking up people. ICE is also purchasing tools from surveillance firm PenLink thatcombine location data with social media data. Together, these platforms make continuous, automated monitoring not only possible but routine.

Lessons from abroad

The United Statesisn't alonein government monitoring of social media. In the United Kingdom, a new police unit taskedwith scanning online discussionsabout immigration and civil unrest has drawn criticism for blurring the line between public safety and political policing.

Across the globe,spyware scandalshave shown howlawful access toolsthat were initially justified for counterterrorism were later usedagainst journalists and activists. Once these systems exist, mission creep, also known asfunction creep, becomes the rule rather than the exception.

The social cost of being watched

Around-the-clock surveillance doesn't just gather information - it also changes behavior.

Research found that visits to Wikipedia articles on terrorismdropped sharplyimmediately after revelations about the National Security Agency's global surveillance in June 2013.

For immigrants and activists, the stakes are higher. A post about a protest or a joke can be reinterpreted as intelligence." Knowing that federal contractors may be watching in real timeencourages self-censorship and discourages civic participation. In this environment, the digital self, an identity composed of biometric markers, algorithmic classifications, risk scores and digital traces, becomes a risk that follows you across platforms and databases.

What's new and why it matters now

What is genuinely new is the privatization of interpretation. ICE isn't just collecting more data, it is outsourcing judgment to private contractors. Private analysts, aided by artificial intelligence, are likely to decide what online behavior signals danger and what doesn't. That decision-making happens rapidly and across large numbers of people, for the most part beyond public oversight.

At the same time, the consolidation of data means social media content can now sit besidelocation and biometric informationinsidePalantir's hub. Enforcement increasingly happens through data correlations,raising questions about due process.

ICE's request for information is likely to evolve into a full procurement contract within months, andrecent litigationfrom the League of Women Voters and the Electronic Privacy Information Center against the Department of Homeland Security suggests that the oversight is likely to lag far behind the technology. ICE's plan to maintain permanent watch floors, open indoor spaces equipped with video and computer monitors, that are staffed24 hours a day, 365 days a yearsignals that this likely isn't a temporary experiment and instead is a new operational norm.

What accountability looks like

Transparency starts with public disclosure of the algorithms and scoring systems ICE uses. Advocacy groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union argue that law enforcement agenciesshould meet the same warrant standards onlinethat they do in physical spaces. The Brennan Center for Justice and the ACLU argue that there should beindependent oversightof surveillance systems for accuracy and bias. And several U.S. senators have introduced legislation tolimit bulk purchasesfrom data brokers.

Without checks like these, I believe that the boundary between border control and everyday life is likely to keep dissolving. As the digital border expands, it risks ensnaring anyone whose online presence becomeslegible to the system.

Nicole M. Bennett is a Ph.D. Candidate in Geography and Assistant Director at the Center for Refugee Studies at Indiana University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.