At 250, America is more surveilled than ever

By Dian Dian Jonas-Walsh

Last month, the United States celebrated 250 years of independence, and the principles codified in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights soon after. But those principles look increasingly fragile. Barely a year ago, on July 4, 2025, President Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill into law, curtailing freedoms and raising new concerns about due process and privacy protections.

The law passed through reconciliation, a process that allows legislation affecting spending, revenue, or the debt limit to clear the Senate by a simple majority rather than the sixty votes needed to break a filibuster. Reconciliation bills cannot be filibustered because debate is capped at twenty hours, so the bill moved quickly through Congress. While the law was a high priority for the White House, it was sharply contested in Congress and likely could not have passed without reconciliation.

This past June, Congress passed yet another reconciliation bill; this one directing $70 billion to DHS, ICE, and CBP. The money funds expanded detention and deportation, new surveillance technology, the hiring of thousands of additional agents, and deeper partnerships with state and local police. Section 202(9) sets aside $350 million for ICE to use in cities that are “non-cooperating” with Trump, including but not limited to those that don’t have 287(g) agreements, which deputize local officers to carry out federal immigration jobs.

Altogether, the One Big Beautiful Bill funneled $170 billion towards immigration and border enforcement activities. That total includes $3.5 billion for states that assist federal immigration enforcement, such as those whose police departments partner directly with ICE, and $29.9 billion for ICE itself, covering more than 10,000 new officers and immigration attorneys along with transportation, technology, and other operating costs. Those appropriations remain available through the end of fiscal year 2029, so DHS and its component agencies can sustain this level of spending for years.

This level of spending not only raises concerns over immigration and due process, but also serious Fourth Amendment and privacy problems. The surveillance capacity it funds is not built in-house. ICE acquires it through contracts with private technology firms such as Palantir, which consolidates records from separate government databases into a single searchable system, and NEC, whose facial recognition tools let the agency identify people from images. Those contracts let the government assemble a portrait of a person's life that it could not lawfully compile on its own.

ICE's expanded budget has allowed it to sign and renew contracts with both companies. In April 2025, Palantir signed a $30 million contract to build ICE a platform called ImmigrationOS, which merges federal, state, and local government databases into a single interface and uses them to identify people for deportation and to track "self-deportations." ImmigrationOS works in tandem with a second Palantir system, Enhanced Leads Identification and Targeting for Enforcement, or ELITE. Investigations by 404 Media and the ACLU found that ELITE flags people at risk of deportation and surfaces their identifying information, including address, age, date of birth, and photographs.

NEC, which first signed a contract with DHS in 2020, has only deepened their relationship with the federal government under Trump. NEC built Mobile Fortify, a biometric surveillance tool, specifically for ICE to use in their field operations. Mobile Fortify allows agents to take peoples’ photos and scan their faces or fingerprints for biometric data, and search state and federal government databases (TSA, Global Entry, DMVs, and police records) for any matches. ICE doesn’t need ask for consent to collect biometric information and run a person’s data through the app. Since the One Big Beautiful Bill increased partnerships with the police, the use of Mobile Fortify and other facial recognition apps could soon extend to local police departments.

The effects of the legislative package are already being felt across the country. In one instance, a woman named Emily was patrolling her neighborhood to monitor ICE activity. While tailing an ICE vehicle, the officer took a picture of Emily in her car, proceeded to lean out the window and recite Emily’s name and address. This is a gross overstep and blatant misuse of this technology. Another woman who tracked ICE agents in her city reported that the same agents knocked on her door later that same day. These women were the victims of intimidation and suppression enabled by surveillance technology.

ICE is violating Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights by tracking down and identifying people without consent using surveillance technology and arresting and deporting them without a fair hearing. Supreme Court precedent holds that detainees “are entitled to notice and an opportunity to challenge their removal.” The late Supreme Court Justice Scalia put it well: “It is well established that the Fifth Amendment entitles aliens to due process of law in deportation proceedings.” The Trump administration and ICE have flagrantly violated immigrants’ constitutional rights, and they won’t stop there.

States must stand firm to protect the constitutional rights and privacy of their residents. If anyone can be stopped while walking down the street and have their biometric data stored and government records accessed at any time, then nobody is safe. Governor Hochul of New York signed a new set of laws to protect New Yorkers from ICE. The Surveillance Technology Oversight Project urges our lawmakers to go further and prevent ICE from using surveillance technology to violate our right to privacy. We just celebrated the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. Now more than ever, we must ask ourselves: How can we truly be free under a federal government that continuously undermines our rights?

Dian Dian Jonas-Walsh is a civil rights intern at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.). She recently graduated from Barnard College with a degree in American Studies, and will begin the Master in Urban Planning program at Harvard University this fall.