While Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) may be at the center of numerous controversies, one of the most recent has gone international: The agency has agreed to a five-year contract with Canadian tech conglomerate Thomson Reuters to obtain information on alleged “voter fraud” and “immigration fraud.” Many are wary of the two parties working together.
‘Screening and vetting of individuals’
While Thomson Reuters is best known for its eponymous news agency Reuters, its data broker division has deals with several U.S. government organizations. The latest ICE contract, valued at $25 million per year, directs Thomson Reuters to assist with the “screening and vetting of individuals and entities for immigration, criminal and national security risks,” according to the contract document in the Federal Register. Thomson Reuters will also assist with identifying “violations of U.S. immigration and customs laws.”
The contract means ICE will now have access to the company’s “databases of personal data — which includes peoples’ names, addresses, Social Security numbers, ethnicity, social media posts and geolocation information,” said 404 Media. By signing the document, Thomson Reuters will be “able to let ICE continuously monitor millions of people and entities of interest.” Other data sources that feed into Thomson Reuters’ program include “credit header data, which is the personal information someone provides to a financial institution to open a credit card, like their address.”
The document also says ICE has a large need to identify “unaccompanied minors,” which will help “support the presidential mandate of the identification of voter fraud, immigration fraud and national security.” But the contract “does not explain why ICE would need to identify unaccompanied minors, which is typically the remit of the Department of Health and Human Services,” or how the data “would be used to combat voter fraud or immigration fraud,” said Wired.
‘My blood ran cold’
There has been significant opposition to Thomson Reuters’ partnering with ICE, including in Canada where the company is based. At least one politician, Canadian New Democratic Party Leader Avi Lewis, has urged Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to block the deal. “My blood ran cold when I read about this development,” Lewis said to The Guardian. “Complicity between Canadian corporations and ICE should absolutely be illegal.”
ICE has been working with Thomson Reuters since at least 2015. But the new contract is the first to state that the “software will be used to support the Trump administration’s objectives of addressing supposed ‘voter fraud,’” said The Guardian. The company itself has denied any wrongdoing; recent media reporting “reflects misunderstandings about how our products are governed and safeguarded,” Thomson Reuters said in a statement. Its products are “provided under strict contractual terms, subject to applicable law and governed by strong safeguards.”
It seems some within the company do not agree with this assessment. Prior to the contract being signed, 200 Thomson Reuters employees wrote a letter asking the company not to renew its agreement with ICE. “We have experienced our neighbors, friends and family members undergoing arrests and detention, intimidation and harassment, and public violence,” said the letter obtained by The New York Times. “We question if our investigative products and services are being used in accordance with our mission and values, as well as in accordance with the law and our nation’s constitution.”