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  "path": "/2026/04/ice-contract-ai-surveillance-immigrants/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-04-15T11:48:26.000Z",
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  "textContent": "### 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.\n\n* * *\n\nUnder 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)\n\nImmigration 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_.\n\nDubbed “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.\n\nAdditional 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.\n\nA promotional blurb for the tool on Edge Ops LLC’s website claims that Project SAFE HAVEN “transforms the way we identify, locate, and map illegal migrants.”\n\nICE’s purchase of the tool was made public in federal procurement records released this week.\n\nUnder the Trump administration, the Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency, has been granted a multibillion-dollar slush fund, which it is using to build out its surveillance dragnet. The agency has already amassed a vast arsenal of surveillance tools that can monitor everything from the location of hundreds of millions of phones to real-time social media content.\n\nIn this case, Project SAFE HAVEN was purchased specifically for the Homeland Security Task Force National Coordination Center, a hub for information sharing between ICE, the US military, and other federal agencies.\n\nA description of Project SAFE HAVEN from Edge Ops LLC’s website.\n\nAs the _Intercept_ reported in February, little is known about this center’s operations. Testimony from federal officials indicates that the entity serves as the primary coordinating hub for the regional Homeland Security task forces that have proliferated under the Trump administration, and which are supposedly “combating cartels” and other criminal organizations. These task forces involve collaboration between ICE and other federal agencies, including the Pentagon and the FBI.\n\nAs of last month, ICE had allocated $440 million to the Homeland Security task force program, per Office of Management and Budget records reviewed by the _Lever_.\n\nICE’s plans for Project SAFE HAVEN describe it as the National Coordination Center’s “analytic cell,” which will streamline the intelligence and data being processed by the center’s arms.\n\nThe procurement documents indicate that Project SAFE HAVEN’s surveillance dragnet may extend far beyond the cartels and gangs that the coordination center is purportedly targeting. The records describe targets that include “extremists” and “illegal re-entrants,” the latter category referring to immigrants who have entered the United States without state authorization more than once.\n\nEdge Ops LLC, which was awarded a one-year contract to provide the technology, is a defense contractor led by Jennifer Piccerillo, a former Raytheon executive, and Robert Piccerillo, who formerly worked for the Department of Defense. Although the vendor’s website lists a variety of projects it has worked on for government clients, there is little public information on the company’s previous awards.\n\nEdge Ops LLC did not return a request for comment from the _Lever_ , nor did ICE.\n\n* * *\n\nThis article was first published by the _Lever_ , an award-winning independent investigative newsroom.",
  "title": "ICE Just Signed a $12 Million Deal to Track Migrants With AI",
  "updatedAt": "2026-04-15T11:48:26.000Z"
}