ICE moves ahead with $100 million domestic intelligence program in dozens of U.S. cities

A federal document released in September outlines ICE’s new Enforcement and Removal Operations Overwatch and National Security Enforcement (ERO ONE) program, which will receive roughly $100 million from the Department of Homeland Security. The plan calls for hiring 142 intelligence analysts who will be stationed in at least two dozen U.S. cities and linked to a central office in Washington, D.C. Their role is to examine both classified and public information to produce “network, link, and relationship” analyses that include family members, friends and acquaintances of identified individuals.

While the guidelines prohibit agents from exercising arrest, detention, search, seizure, interrogation or other direct law-enforcement powers, past overreach by ICE raises doubts about compliance. The agency has already deployed facial-recognition, mobile-phone location data, artificial-intelligence tools and “zero-click” methods that can extract encrypted phone data without user interaction. Civil-rights groups warn the effort could mark a shift toward a permanent domestic surveillance apparatus targeting immigrant communities.