ICE's Summer Spending Spree
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hey, you're listening to the On the Media Midweek podcast. I'm Michael Loewinger. At the start of 2026, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, was top of mind for many Americans, in large part due to what the agency called Operation Metro Surge.
What triggered renewed national attention on ICE at the start of 2026?
The order sent nearly 3,000 agents to the Twin Cities in Minnesota, resulting in thousands of arrests and two U.S. citizens shot dead by ICE agents. There were nationwide protests, congressional hearings, and plenty of headlines. But as the weeks went on, ICE faded a bit from the spotlight. The agency was still arresting and deporting thousands, and ICE shot even more people.
Two fatal shootings this month involving immigration and customs enforcement officers have reignited protests and renewed questions about tactics, training, and recruitment at the agency. Two men were killed in these latest stops. In Houston, Texas, it was 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Arajo, originally from Mexico. In Biddeford, Maine, it was 26-year-old Johann Sebastian Duran Guerrero, originally from Colombia. None of the agents involved were wearing body cameras, and neither of the victims were the intended targets of the operation.
The violence and another uptick in arrests have renewed scrutiny of the agency at the heart of Trump's anti-immigration efforts. In January, I spoke with Joseph Cox, investigative reporter and co-founder of 404 Media, to talk about the array of tactics and technology ICE was using. And I decided to call him back to ask about the new tools and strategies it's added since then.
ICE continues to spend money on all sorts of data and surveillance technology. There is location data harvested from smartphones. There is access to license plate information. There is personal information that ICE is buying from Thomson Reuters and a bunch of other companies as well. Of course, listeners will know Thomson Reuters for running the Reuters news agency. The company is also a massive data broker, and they sell all sorts of private information to the government and to private clients. Just recently, funnily enough, a day after President Trump went on an unhinged press conference about voter security and election fraud, we reported that ICE is going to pay Thomson Reuters another $125 million for a bunch—
of personal data to investigate not just immigration fraud, but what they describe as voters fraud. And if anything, and I'm kind of reading the tea leaves here, you go through these documents and you can see what the president is saying publicly about voter fraud, alleged voter fraud and election security. And it's then being reflected in the US procurement documents as well. They are absolutely echoing one another.
You may not know the answer to this, but ICE voter fraud? How does this body even have jurisdiction to be investigating these allegations?
How it fits into ICE's mandate is that technically the data is likely to end up, according to the records, with HSI, Homeland Security Investigations. This is a division of ICE that has... traditionally been focused on cybercrime, money laundering, child abuse imagery, like real, legitimate criminal investigations. But as we know from data that was published by the Cato Institute, something like 90% of HSI officials were actually redirected to ICE's main mission, which is finding people to deport, obviously. That's not dried up, obviously, because there's still a lot of people being detained. But fraud, even if it's baseless claims of voter fraud, would probably technically fall under HSI's remit as well, because it has that fraud word in it.
This is still like early days. I am reading between the lines of these procurement records, but they say on black and white there, they want to use this data to investigate voter fraud.
Talk a little bit about Thomson Reuters product Clear. This is not the same Clear that travelers might encounter in some airports, right?
Which fatal shootings and protests reignited scrutiny of ICE tactics and training?
What exactly is this service? What is ICE getting out of this contract?
The clear investigative database sold by Thomson Reuters collects all sorts of public and private data.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:16
2
What triggered renewed national attention on ICE at the start of 2026?
0:16–4:08
3
Which fatal shootings and protests reignited scrutiny of ICE tactics and training?
4:08–9:34
4
What kinds of surveillance data and purchases is ICE currently spending on?
9:34–19:51