Two prominent Democratic U.S. senators have directed the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) inspector general (IG) to investigate what they describe as an accelerating and poorly supervised expansion of biometric collection, data aggregation, and surveillance tools by its immigration enforcement agencies, warning that DHS may be amassing sensitive personal information in ways that circumvent constitutional protections.
In their letter to DHS Inspector General (IG) Joseph Cuffari, Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine argue that a growing web of technology procurements across Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and related DHS components has dramatically expanded the government’s ability to collect, retain, and analyze personal data about Americans and noncitizens alike.
“We are deeply concerned that ICE’s surge in brutality against American communities is being facilitated by the inappropriate and unsupervised use of surveillance technology,” the two senators told Cuffari.
Appointed by President Donald Trump, Cuffari has been the DHS IG since July 2019 and has had a checkered tenure – before and since. In October 2024, the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency found, among other things, that Cuffari provided incorrect or misleading information to Congress about investigations into his conduct.
Warner is the former chair and current vice chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and undoubtedly will scrutinize Cuffari’s actions in response to his and Kaine’s letter.
Warner and Kaine asked the inspector general to conduct a comprehensive audit of DHS immigration procurements and data practices to determine whether they have resulted in violations of federal law, privacy safeguards, or the Fourth Amendment.
The letter situates its concerns against the backdrop of recent, highly publicized enforcement actions, including fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens during encounters with ICE and CBP officers and aggressive tactics in residential neighborhoods.
“It’s important that your office shine light on activities that undergird ICE’s enforcement actions including a muddled patchwork of technology procurements that have significantly expanded DHS’ ability to collect, retain, and analyze information about Americans,” the two senators told Cuffari.
“Together, ICE’s new information collection tools potentially enable DHS to circumvent the constitutional protections provided by the Fourth Amendment – protections guaranteed to all Americans and all persons within our borders,” the senators noted.
According to the lawmakers, DHS has quietly assembled a “muddled patchwork” of data and surveillance systems that together allow immigration authorities to profile, target, and monitor individuals at scale.
They contend that this architecture risks eroding long-standing limits on government searches by shifting enforcement decisions upstream, into opaque data pipelines that aggregate information from commercial, governmental, and third-party sources.
The letter points to DHS’s unprecedented recent funding levels as a catalyst for this expansion. ICE alone received $75 billion in the most recent reconciliation package, more than the FBI, enabling rapid procurement of data-driven tools without what the senators describe as commensurate oversight or transparency.
Among the initiatives cited are requests for information aimed at big data and advertising technology firms, proposals to expand biometric collection by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and efforts to hire contractors dedicated to social media and open source intelligence monitoring.
