ICE Just Signed a $12 Million Deal to Track Migrants With AI

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has now inked a $12.2 million contract for an artificial intelligence tool that purportedly maps out immigrants’ daily routines, habits, and real-time locations and categorizes them as potential threats.

Trump Sends ICE Agents To Airports and signs executive order to pay TSA

Under the Trump administration, the Department of Homeland Security has been granted a multibillion-dollar slush fund, which it is using to build out its surveillance dragnet. (Matthew Hatcher / Getty Images)


Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) just inked a $12.2 million contract for an artificial intelligence tool that claims to map out immigrants’ daily routines, habits, and real-time location and categorize them as potential threats, per procurement records reviewed by the Lever.

Dubbed “Project SAFE HAVEN,” the product is advertised by defense vendor Edge Ops LLC as a “question-based AI interface” that uses “persistent passive data collection” to map “patterns of life,” a surveillance tactic that ICE says will identify the “habitual locations, routes, and behavioral patterns” of its targets.

Additional features of the technology described in procurement documents include real-time location tracking and analysis that will categorize individuals and groups as affiliated with ostensible criminal organizations, such as gangs or cartels. That includes building “target profiles” that track individuals’ activity by linking data obtained from Wi-Fi network connections and mobile smart devices, such as cell phones and smartwatches.

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