At a hearing led by Congresswoman Delia Ramirez on July 14, 2026, NIJC’s Associate Director of Policy, Jesse Franzblau, testified about the expansion of surveillance programs and their use in carrying out sweeping, warrantless arrests and provided future recommendations regarding immigration enforcement technology.
Jesse Franzblau provided the following remarks at Congressional Progressive Caucus Immigration Task Force Shadow Hearing on “The Tech Behind ICE: Oligarchs, Immigration Enforcement, and the Threat to Democracy:”
Thank you, Congresswoman Ramirez and Congressman Johnson, members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus Immigration Task Force, for holding this important shadow hearing. My name is Jesse Franzblau and I serve as Associate Policy Director for the National Immigrant Justice Center, headquartered in Chicago, IL.
For over four decades, NIJC has dedicated itself to ensuring human rights protections and access to justice for immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. NIJC provides direct legal services to approximately 10,000 low-income individuals each year and advocates on behalf of our immigrant communities through policy advocacy, impact litigation, and public education.
I am grateful for this shadow hearing focused on the surveillance technology that impacts the communities that NIJC serves and the broader public at large. Today, I will speak about: 1) how surveillance programs have dramatically expanded over the years; 2) how these programs are used to carry out sweeping warrantless arrests; and, 3) provide recommendations for lawmakers to curb the waste and abuse associated with Department of Homeland Security (DHS) surveillance programs.
1. The expanding surveillance apparatus
The budget for DHS surveillance technology has increased dramatically over the years. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are currently holding approximately $100 billion of the $140 billion that Congress provided these agencies through reconciliation last year. This year, on June 9th, Congress again relied on the same fast-track reconciliation budget procedure to bypass regular appropriations and allocate an additional $70 billion to these abusive agencies through S.2. This means more people disappeared and more invasive technology, without any safeguards to protect privacy rights or avert human rights abuses.
The administration also continues to seek more authority for surveillance programs and create new data collection systems. This includes seeking data on immigration attorneys, creating databases on voters and taxpayers, seeking to re-authorize sweeping warrantless surveillance powers, and more. It is imperative for Congress to hold the executive branch in check, divest from these abusive agencies and place serious restrictions on funding for surveillance-related authorities and programs.
2. Sweeping arrests without warrants
Hundreds of Illinois immigrants filed wrongful detention lawsuits after the Trump Administration’s Operation Midway Blitz began in September 2025. These arrest operations tore at the social fabric of Chicago communities, disproportionately harming immigrants and people of color.
Operation Midway Blitz also exposed a particular vulnerability with federal agents’ open access to Illinois residents’ data. In particular, access to Illinois driver’s license information, vehicle registration information, and other state data has made possible countless warrantless arrests of individuals—often in violent ways, such as breaking car windows and ripping individuals out of their cars on the basis of the information DHS just accessed. DHS uses these various tech tools to systematize their racial profiling and constitutional violations.
The State of Illinois and City of Chicago filed a lawsuit in January 2026, which provides details of the abuses carried out during Operation Midway Blitz. The complaint describes how ICE and Border Patrol utilized Mobile Fortify in the field more than 100,000 times after the launch of the application in June 2025. Federal agents used the Mobile Fortify application to scan the fingerprints and faces of people in Illinois as they were carrying out sweeping arrests. The plaintiffs in the case argue that ICE’s growing use of biometric tracking violates the Illinois Constitution and privacy laws. The complaint also details how ICE and Border Patrol carried out hundreds of warrantless arrests in a discriminatory manner without probable cause or individualized assessments of flight risk.
In other cities, where there are challenges on warrantless arrests, we have also seen how invasive surveillance technology is central to sweeping arrest operations. In a case brought by Innovation Law Lab challenging warrantless arrests in Portland, ICE officers provided testimony describing the use of the Mobile Fortify app, as well as an application called “Elite” and license plate readers. Agents use the application Elite like Google Maps, to see how many individuals with an “immigration nexus” are believed to be in a certain area. This “nexus” could mean any history of contact with immigration officials. The Innovation Law Lab complaint describes how officers use license plate readers to run plate numbers and cross-reference them with other databases. The technology leads to federal agents making warrantless arrests based on unreliable, unsubstantiated and unverifiable information.
3. Divest from ICE and Border Patrol & protect communities from abuses
The State of Illinois and the City of Chicago recognized the harms caused by ICE and Border Patrol many years ago and adopted the Illinois TRUST Act and the Welcoming City Ordinance. Under the Illinois TRUST Act and Chicago’s Welcoming City Ordinance, local police are strictly prohibited from collaborating with federal immigration agents. Officers cannot stop, search, arrest, or share nonpublic information with ICE based solely on a person’s immigration status.
Local authorities have a vested interest in not just preserving their resources but averting collusion with a federal government that is intent on breaking the law. NIJC has seen this firsthand in the Chicago area, where our organization has represented hundreds of people in ICE and Border Patrol custody unlawfully abducted from our streets. State and local governments should review current practices for data sharing with the federal government, restricting data sharing where possible that is not otherwise required by law. These laws must be strengthened to close loopholes and restrict the use of surveillance technology by federal agents on our immigrant communities.
Lawmakers must also act at the federal level, including cutting funds for ICE or Border Patrol and redirecting funds away from surveillance-related contracts and towards communities. Congress can also place restrictions on funding for surveillance technologies through the FY27 Appropriations process, implement reforms to surveillance authorities, freeze any new contracts, require stringent reviews of existing programs, require robust firewalls so DHS cannot use and abuse data from other agencies, and end programs found to systematically violate privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties rights.