Your Phone Could Lead ICE Right to You

U.S. immigration authorities are using new technology that allows them to track the movements of mobile phones across entire neighborhoods, prompting renewed concern from privacy and civil liberties advocates. According to documents obtained by 404 Media, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has purchased access to two surveillance tools from the company Penlink, known as Webloc and Tangles.

Webloc allows agents to draw custom boundaries on a digital map—such as around workplaces, protest locations, or other sites—and identify all mobile devices present within that area during a specific time period. Those devices can then be tracked to additional locations, including homes and other frequently visited places. An internal ICE memo indicates agents can search this commercially obtained data without a warrant. Don Bell of the Constitution Project at the Project on Government Oversight told the Independent that the practice is “probably unconstitutional.”

The location data is sourced from the commercial data marketplace, where information collected by everyday mobile apps is sold by data brokers, according to 404 Media. Once a phone is flagged in Webloc, the system can reconstruct its movement history both locally and nationwide, identifying other devices that appear at the same locations.

The second tool, Tangles, provides social media monitoring capabilities, including facial recognition in images, sentiment analysis of posts, and the ability to create watch lists. Civil liberties organizations argue that ICE is exploiting a legal gray area to bypass the Supreme Court’s 2018 Carpenter v. United States ruling, which requires warrants for accessing historical location data from telecommunications providers. ICE maintains that users have voluntarily shared their data with third parties by using apps, eliminating a reasonable expectation of privacy under the Fourth Amendment.

The ACLU has criticized that argument as “self-serving,” warning that the technology enables broad and unchecked surveillance at an agent’s discretion. Advocacy groups say immigrant communities, minorities, and anti-ICE protesters are likely to be disproportionately affected, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

Sen. Ron Wyden, a longtime critic of the location-data industry, said the program gives “President Trump’s shock troops” a powerful tool to target people “who have done nothing wrong.” Wyden argues the practice violates federal law unless users explicitly consent to their data being sold to the government, which he says is not occurring.

ICE has spent more than $2.3 million on Penlink licenses since September, despite a 2023 inspector general report finding that ICE, Customs and Border Protection, and the Secret Service improperly used similar commercial location data and failed to implement adequate safeguards. In a statement, Penlink said its products rely only on publicly available or commercially obtained data, are designed to support criminal investigations and public safety, and operate under strict compliance and responsible-use standards.

Original Source