Across the country, voters made clear Tuesday they oppose having local law enforcement agencies assist US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in detaining and jailing immigrants.

In multiple states, including Texas, Maryland, Wisconsin and New York, county sheriffs who actively embraced partnership agreements with ICE were ousted by candidates who oppose ‘’deputizing’’ local police for federal immigration enforcement. A pro-ICE attorney general candidate in Texas and ballot initiative in Colorado also met defeat.

The results are an encouraging sign in slowing ICE’s expanded use of so-called 287(g) agreements, especially Task Force Model agreements, which provide generous financial support to local and state agencies that deputize their officers to conduct civil immigration enforcement as part of their routine work.

With more than 1,850 such agreements in place in 30 states, the 287(g) program has been a key lever in ICE’s stepped-up enforcement numbers, including record high arrests last June and July, many of them in states like Florida and Texas which have hundreds of 287(g) agreements in place. More than 29,000 state and local officers have been granted authority to question people about their immigration status and make arrests, according to Department of Homeland Security.

But that momentum may be shifting: In red and blue states alike, voters showed leeriness at seeing their local agencies, including highway patrols, parks departments and even state wildlife officers, being used for immigration enforcement.

Democrat Nathan Johnson’s victory in the Texas Attorney General race could be one of the biggest game changers. Johnson, a state senator who opposed a state law requiring county sheriffs to seek 287(g) agreements with ICE by Dec 1, will be responsible for enforcing that law – or not. As of yesterday, 209 of the 232 sheriff offices covered by the state law had 287(g) agreements, leaving 23 without one ahead of the application deadline.

Johnson has also raised concerns about whether his own office should continue collaborating directly with ICE on immigration enforcement.

Similar shifts happened in other parts of the country, including Colorado where voters rejected a ballot initiative requiring police officers, sheriff departments and prosecutors to work more closely with federal immigration agents.

In Maryland’s Frederick County, a notorious pro-ICE, pro-287(g) sheriff, Chuck Jenkins, who boasted of helping deport 2,000 people, was thrown out by a double-digit margin. The victor Democrat Karl Bickel, has vowed not to work with ICE.

Pro-ICE sheriffs, who actively embraced 287(g) agreements, were also shown the door in Wisconsin and New York.

Jason Rippl, the incoming sheriff in Winnebago County, WI, has promised to void the county’s 287(g) agreement with ICE on his first day in office.

“I think that by any modern law enforcement standards, we’ve seen pretty clearly that [ICE’s] tactics are sloppy,” Rippl told a reporter last month.

So begins the tug of war between ICE, which is flush with money for more 287(g) agreements, and new local leaders saying, ‘Not in our backyard.’

The latest breakthrough is the Cook County Board of Commissioners in Illinois, which voted last week to prohibit county contractors from sharing residents’ personal information with data brokers who are using it for commercial purposes, such as selling it to ICE. Contractors are also banned from passing along county data to immigration agents without a criminal warrant or a judge’s order.

The unanimous vote is part of a growing wave of local and state actions to limit data sharing allowing ICE to access billions of personal records from cities and counties across the country. Even in sanctuary locales like Cook County, where direct interactions with ICE are forbidden, local police data is being used to help ICE make local arrests.

“We live in a state of constant surveillance and that technology, unfortunately, is not regulated,” Cook County Commissioner Alma Anaya said last week, of the measure taking effect in 60 days. “As county commissioners, it is our duty to protect residents from becoming the ever-evolving targets.”

In April, Oklahoma City officials amended the city’s contract with data broker Lexis Nexis, mandating that local police data only be shared with 14 local law enforcement agencies and nobody else, including ICE. Maryland adopted a new privacy protection law in July with similar data sharing limits, and the Massachusetts legislature is considering the same.

While the Cook County Sheriff doesn’t hold people in jail on ICE’s behalf, county jail data, including names, photos, charges and custody status, has still been finding its way to ICE.

Here’s how it is happening: the Cook County Sheriff’s office sends real-time booking and release data to Appriss, an Equifax-owned company that runs Illinois’ victim notification system known as VINE. VINE is valuable because it lets crime victims and their families sign up for an alert when a person accused of harming them is released, transferred or has a court date change.

The problem is the county’s contract allows Appriss to sell that same jail data to other companies, including LexisNexis, which has supplied ICE with jail booking data since 2021 under a contract that ultimately paid the company more than $24.5 million.

ICE makes millions of queries every year through the LexisNexis police data platform, the Accurint Virtual Crime Center, which thousands of local police departments use, many of them sanctuary cities. During a six-month period in 2021, ICE’s Chicago Field Office ran more than 13,000 searches in LexisNexis and generated about 1,800 reports, according to FinePrint, an investigative website focused on surveillance and policing.

The county’s new ordinance aims to block the data broker-to-ICE pipeline. Appriss will no longer be allowed to sell ‘live’ jail data to brokers like LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters. It is one of the first laws in the country that directly controls what a vendor does with data after the government hands it over.

The county’s vote came on the same day our De-ICE Action Network held a ‘Spotlight on LexisNexis’ webinar to educate local activists on the police data pipeline that ICE is exploiting thanks to LexisNexis and steps they can take to stop it. More than 500 people signed up.

Cook County closed its loophole because local advocates started asking questions. You can do the same where you live, whether you’re starting from scratch or already pushing your officials for answers.

Register for our Nov. 12 session at 9:15 a.m. ET to connect with other local advocates, discuss progress and challenges, and get advice from Shawn Segal of FinePrint.

The De-ICE Action Network is a volunteer-powered alliance holding ICE’s partners and profiteers accountable through peaceful, strategic action.

Take action with us.

American policing that used to run on scattered local files is now being pooled together into a single privatized intelligence network that ICE is tapping every day to boost its arrest numbers. Even in sanctuary cities like Cambridge, MA, where police interactions with ICE are restricted, local police data is being used to help ICE make local arrests.

Two LexisNexis products, the Accurint Virtual Crime Center and Accurint Public Safety Marketplace, help power this data gathering machine. Thousands of local and state law enforcement agencies use these platforms to provide data and gain access to billions of personal records covering over 95 percent of America’s adult population. Police records that most people agree should stay local, including sensitive details about crime victims and minors, are instead pulled into a commercial database that thousands of agencies can search — among them ICE, which is paying LexisNexis $22 million for access to the information.

If this AI-powered data-laundering pipeline sounds invasive, it is. And it’s not just LexisNexis that is powering and profiting from it. Thomson Reuters and Palantir are also supporting — and collaborating on — this massive surveillance network that is tracking far more than undocumented immigrants.

On October 22, the De-ICE Action Network is holding a “Spotlight on LexisNexis” webinar to educate activists about this little-known data pipeline and steps they can take to prevent local police departments from sharing sensitive private data with ICE and other federal agencies. The webinar will feature Shawn Segal, a public interest researcher at FinePrint.Report, an investigative website focused on surveillance, privacy and policing.

To join the 12:15 pm ET webinar or receive a recording, please register here.

As the power and reach of police data sharing has expanded, communities, alarmed by dwindling privacy protections, are finding ways to push back.

In many cases, it’s simply a matter of modifying the police department’s data-sharing agreement with LexisNexis.

Consider Oklahoma City: In April, after public pressure over ICE arrests and privacy concerns, the City Council voted to limit sharing of its police data to 14 regional law enforcement agencies. LexisNexis agreed to the contract renewal with the city, at the same $165,000 price.

“The city kept the tool, but fenced off the data so that only neighboring agencies could share records,” wrote Segal on the FinePrint website. “It’s a useful example for other cities trying to take back control of where their residents’ data goes.”

Maryland is also fighting back. Earlier this month, 10 privacy and civil rights groups filed a complaint with the AG’s Office accusing LexisNexis, Thomson Reuters, Flock Safety and four other companies of violating the state’s new privacy law. The law, in force since July 1, prohibits the sale of vehicle location data and other personal data to a government unit engaged in civil immigration enforcement.

“Just as an example, we have seen arrest warrants that say ICE was running license plates,” Shana Khader, legal director of the advocacy group, We Are CASA, told CBS News. “That’s accessing state data in order to find information about these drivers.”

Cambridge is also trying to limit data sharing – most notably, through sanctuary policies that restrict police cooperation – and conversations - with ICE. But data is still slipping out, particularly when it comes to arrests where defendants are fingerprinted. Fingerprinting data is routinely shared with a national police database that ICE is always tracking.

A May 2025 Cambridge police report documents a specific case where an alleged shoplifter who’d been fingerprinted was picked up and arrested by ICE moments after she left the police department property. “It is believed that ICE learned of this arrest after (Leidy Torres) Castano had her fingerprints checked against a national database as part of the standard booking process,” the police report stated.

A new Prison Policy Initiative report on local policing and ICE highlights this specific issue.

“There is currently no federal requirement that state and local police fingerprint everyone arrested and contribute their biometric information to the FBI database,” the report states. “Though we do not know of any states that have pursued this strategy to date, this kind of excessive data sharing raises privacy concerns, and limiting the federal government’s access to state and local records would likely greatly inhibit ICE’s ability to identify targets for arrest.”

Wisdom worth considering, for sure.

It’s in dangerously short supply as ICE and its corporate supporters are dropping the hammer on immigrants and ramping up surveillance on American citizens.

We’re seeing it on two fronts in Massachusetts, where license plate reader Flock is being widely rebuked for violating privacy protections in helping ICE, and Boston Dynamics is being criticized for selling data-sniffing robot dogs to ICE

Both cases have enormous implications as ICE and private tech companies build a massive, AI-powered surveillance machine that is tracking far more than undocumented immigrants.

We’re already seeing instances where protesters, legal observers and innocent bystanders are being monitored, targeted and harassed.

Boston’s recent dispute with Flock Safety for misusing license plate data collected from 45 cameras in the city last year is only the tip of the iceberg.

In a report released this month, Boston officials learned that Flock had been sharing license plate data with other external law enforcement agencies after promising it would not do so. It still isn’t clear which outside agencies accessed the data, or how many drivers in Massachusetts were exposed, but thousands of agencies have access to Flock’s national network.

Holyoke, MA, which has a large Latino population, had a similar experience. As recently as August, police departments from around the country were tapping into the city’s Flock data, searching plates for immigration investigations, including some referencing ICE in their justification.

It’s no wonder Boston, Holyoke and two-dozen other Massachusetts communities are pausing or cutting ties with Flock, citing data privacy and police misuse concerns. Nationally, hundreds of cities and counties are doing the same.

While Flock has no direct contracts with ICE, it is gaining access to its vast network of cameras in 5,000 communities nationally through an informal pipeline enabled by local law enforcement. Local police departments across the US have performed thousands of Flock lookups explicitly on behalf of ICE, according to 404 Media reporting.

The slippery slope of surveillance is also at the heart of recent protests aimed at Boston Dynamics over the sale of its Spot robot dogs to ICE. A $1.3 million sale through the Connecticut-based distributor RADēCO was finalized last week.

While the robot’s name sounds benign, the product is not. The four-legged, remote-controlled dogs – each costing over $300,000 – are data-gathering maw. Boston Dynamics boasts that Spot can “capture limitless data and explore without boundaries.”

To its credit, the company has strict ethical principles stating that government use of its devices must not involve “violation of privacy and civil rights laws.” But can ICE be trusted to abide by those standards?

This is an agency that indiscriminately targets immigrants, disobeys court orders and considers protesters to be domestic terrorists.

Take Maine and Minnesota, where observers and protesters at ICE raids say they have been targeted by ICE in numerous ways: agents photographing their faces and license plates; calling them out by name; and calling them at their homes.

Dozens of these individuals have joined multiple lawsuits alleging that ICE is illegally filming and tracking ICE observers. In one of the lawsuits, plaintiff Colleen Fagan recalled seeing an ICE agent filming her face and license plate while she was taking a video of an ICE raid in Portland, Maine. When she asked why she was being filmed, the masked agent responded, “We have a nice little database. And now you’re considered a domestic terrorist, so have fun with that.”

A red flag, for sure.

Americans should not stand idly as ICE and corporate enablers are building a surveillance machine unparalleled in its power and reach. Just as Americans distrust ICE, we should distrust companies, such as Flock and Boston Dynamics, who are helping them.

Some stark July statistics, all record highs: 49,000 immigration arrests. Nearly 80,000 removal orders by immigration judges. More than 325 plane flights depositing tens of thousands of deportees in dozens of countries.

August’s numbers could be even higher as ICE goes even lower to round up more young unaccompanied children – many US-born. We’re also seeing the horrors of Haitian migrants being tracked, detained and deported after losing their Temporary Protected Status. (The tracking is done by shackling Haitians with electronic surveillance ankle monitors.)

The worst is yet to come. And with more brutality. This is not opinion. This is based on a recent batch of federal contract solicitations and contract awards for ICE.

Last week, ICE awarded a $16.7 million contract to outfit ICE officers with shock gloves that can deliver painful electric shocks to alleged combative individuals, whether detainees or protesters. The no-bid contract to Compliant Technologies of Kentucky calls for producing 6,000 of the ‘de-escalation devices” over the next six months.

On Aug. 20, ICE tripled its orders with 14 private contractors to track down immigrants. The contracts, known as skip tracing orders, totaled $57 million. The companies will use public records, commercial databases, and online sources to find where immigrants live and work. According to Scripps News, the contracts include bonuses tied to how many people they find for ICE.

On Aug. 28, another federal contract solicitation details how ICE intends to arrest, hold, try and deport people at scale in the wake of its failed warehouse detention strategy. As described by Project Salt Box, ICE envisions a streamlined operation, run mostly by private contractors, that carries the person from the moment of arrest to the flight out of the country. It involves mobile detention centers inside vans, courtrooms inside contractor-run jails and a clause saying state law does not apply. The jail hubs, each with 700 to 1,800 beds, would be in Pennsylvania, Colorado, Washington and Florida.

Slowing the Machine

It’s encouraging that elected officials are pushing back – not just against ICE, but the hundreds of companies profiting from the largest mass deportation campaign in US history.

The City Council of Jersey City’s bold vote in June to withdraw $225 million in municipal deposits from Citizens Bank over its lending ties to ICE prison companies was a pivotal moment in our successful campaign against the Rhode Island bank. Citizens ended its lending ties with the prison companies, CoreCivic and GEO Group, in mid-July.

I’m also heartened by Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s executive order last week to prevent companies profiting from ICE from winning city contracts.

“Chicago spends billions of dollars every year purchasing goods and services,” Johnson told reporters last week. “And today we’re making it very clear where our heart is. Our heart is with the immigrant families who have endured the fear and intimidation of (these policies).”

We need more leadership like this and not just from elected officials. The American public should also be voicing their concern – in how they vote and by joining campaigns against companies profiting from the despicable ICE agenda

When Egyptian-born Izzy Aly was released from a Pennsylvania ICE detention center in late June, it wasn’t a stroke of random luck.

The 40-year-old’s discharge after six grueling months inside the massive Moshannon Valley facility—despite his deteriorating health and stage 3 kidney disease—was the hard-won result of immigrant rights advocates fighting for his freedom.

Aly was released June 19 after an extensive legal and public relations campaign by the nonprofit immigrant group Juntos and its Moshannon Valley Support Network. Three days later, Aly was back home in Florida, beaming as friends wearing “Free Izzy” t-shirts greeted him at the Amtrak train platform in Orlando.

These nonprofits, and hundreds like them around the country, are helping detained immigrants secure legal aid and essential resources. This support is critical at Moshannon—a sprawling ICE facility run by the private prison corporation GEO Group—where three detainees have died in the last three years.

Yet, today, these grassroots organizations are at a breaking point. With nationwide ICE detentions surging, groups like Juntos desperately need immediate funding to keep pace with the soaring demand for bond fees, legal representation and basic necessities for those locked inside prisons.

Aly, who spent 13 years studying and working in the U.S. while awaiting approval on his green card, was one of the lucky ones who got out. Returning to Philadelphia after a trip to Egypt to grieve his father’s passing, he was arrested by immigration authorities and sent to Moshannon, where his health suffered and he lost 45 pounds.

Activists learned of his plight from one of Izzy’s friends. They sprang into action, holding press conferences, organizing protests and funneling direct aid to Aly. The effort was coordinated through the Shutdown Detention Campaign.

“Juntos and the entire Shutdown Detention Campaign are working tirelessly to connect family members, loved ones and folks being detained inside Moshannon with the resources they need,” said Megan Guidi, founder of Pittsburgh Women for Democracy and a Shutdown Detention and an Indivisible PA Steering Committee member. “With additional funds, organizations like Juntos could support so many more people and families as they navigate a broken immigration system and an administration focused more on cruelty than constitutionality.”

We’re hearing these stories all across the country as thousands of people, most with no criminal convictions of any kind, are being detained every day.

“Our bond fund is depleted and help is needed,” said Susan Shepard, treasurer of the Beyond Bond & Legal Defense Fund, a project of the Boston Immigrant Justice Accompaniment Network (BIJAN), which has spent $1.9 million on bond fees this year to help 220 detained immigrants gain freedom from ICE jails.

Shepard said higher bond fees are also squeezing resources. “Bond amounts have gotten outrageously higher in the past year as judges need to look tough on immigrants,” she said.

The De-ICE Citizens Bank Coalition, which is pressuring Citizens Bank to cut financial ties with ICE prison companies, is holding a ‘Solidarity Donations’ campaign on Saturday, July 18 as part of the 80+ standouts being held outside Citizens’ bank branches across the Eastern US.

Beyond building awareness about Citizens’ deplorable role in funding ICE prisons, we’re shining a light on the enormous stress that immigrant families and community groups helping them are facing today. Direct aid efforts such as Juntos and the BIJAN Bond Fund desperately need support.

By Peyton Fleming

Even as people in ICE detention are dying in record numbers and hunger and labor strikes are spreading, the private prison companies that make the system possible are celebrating these days.

For starters, they are wallowing in money, thanks to a new $70 billion infusion from Congress for what is already the largest detention and deportation crackdown in the nation’s history. More than half is going to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), directly benefitting private prison giants, CoreCivic and GEO Group. Both companies have long track records of alleged neglect and abuse at facilities like New Jersey’s Delaney Hall, where detained immigrants are in week four of a strike.

The windfall doesn’t stop with funding. Newly rolled-out ICE regulations have weakened key protections for people held at for-profit detention centers – including rolling back safeguards against labor exploitation, which is already the subject of multiple class action lawsuits against both prison companies. According to the Washington Post, GEO Group actively lobbied for the changes, a task made easier given that ICE is being run by a former GEO Group executive, David Venturella.

It’s no wonder GEO Group and CoreCivic’s share prices are soaring this month.

It also deepens questions about Citizens Bank’s long history as the key financier behind CoreCivic and GEO Group’s meteoric growth and record profits. Despite mounting pressure from faith-based organizations and over 140 activist groups demanding the bank sever ties, Citizens has balked.

When pressed, Citizens says it stands by its clients “through both good times and challenges, provided they meet our standards and operate in a lawful manner.” It has also publicly minimized reports of facility mistreatment as possibly being “exaggerated.”

A devastating report released last week by the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization (GBIO) directly refutes that.

Drawing on lawsuits, state and federal reports, legal settlements and other documented harms, the 20-page report shows “a pattern of systemic failure” at CoreCivic and GEO Group facilities.

“Medical care is frequently found to be inadequate. Facilities are regularly understaffed,” the report states. “Children are detained in conditions that leading pediatric health experts say cause lasting psychological harm. Detainees are paid $1 a day for labor that keeps facilities running, allegedly under threat of solitary confinement. Records have been falsified.”

Tragically, ICE detention deaths are spiking, as well – with nearly 50 deaths since January 2025. “Death rates in ICE custody, including in GEO and CoreCivic facilities, have reached a 22-year high,” the report says.

With populations and deaths surging in ICE detention, Citizens’ financial ties to these companies – helping them acquire over $2.5 billion in loans, bonds and credit lines since 2012 – are deplorable. While other major banks ended their relationships with private prison companies in 2019, Citizens Bank has strengthened its ties.

By its own choice, Citizens Bank is enabling and profiting from a brutal mass incarceration campaign that is ripping families, communities and the entire country apart.

Until the bank ends these relationships, it will see more frequent and larger protests outside bank branches across the country. It will also see more customers, both large and small, closing their accounts and pulling their money, as part of the ‘Not with Our Money, Citizens’ campaign, a joint effort of GBIO and the De-ICE Citizens Bank Coalition.

GBIO has already pulled $3 million of its deposits and vowed to pull more if changes aren’t made. Last week, the city of Jersey City, New Jersey’s second largest city, voted to move $265 million out of the bank.

The financial bleeding will only worsen until the bank does the right thing.