Oppose DHS Surveillance Expansion and Rescind ICE Surveillance Funding

Today I take pen in hand to write and urge you to oppose additional surveillance funding for the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and to work toward rescinding the billions already appropriated for surveillance technology through the wasteful and misguided Republican Funding Bill last year. We’ve ll seen the headlines, but what’s not revealed is what the human toll really is. The human cost of expanded ICE operations is already evident. In 2025, at least 32 people died in ICE custody or at the hands of ICE agents, including Keith Porter. 2026 began with the deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. As of January 16, 2026, ICE held approximately 73,000 individuals, an 83 percent increase from 2025. This detention surge is enabled by surveillance technologies that threaten the civil liberties of all residents, regardless of immigration status. The One Big Awful Bill appropriated $6.2 billion for border technology and surveillance, funding tools that violate the Privacy Act of 1974. Mobile Fortify allows field agents to conduct real-time facial recognition and fingerprint verification through smartphones, accessing hundreds of millions of biometric records without formal policies governing use or data storage. Palantir's FALCON and ICM systems enable bulk searches across dozens of government and commercial databases, including airport travelers, border crossings by U.S. citizens, and telecommunications metadata. Most alarming is the $2 million contract for Paragon Solutions' Graphite spyware, which can infiltrate any mobile phone, bypass encrypted applications like WhatsApp and Signal, and enable complete device takeover. This same spyware has been used by foreign governments to target journalists and activists in two dozen countries. DHS has entered in dubious and likely illegal data sharing agreements with the IRS, HUD, HHS, and SSA, creating what Congress explicitly sought to prevent in 1974: a centralized federal information system resembling a personal dossier on every citizen. When Congress passed the Privacy Act, it aimed to make it legally impossible for the federal government to assemble anything resembling an Orwellian surveillance state. Therefore, I urge you to prohibit additional funding for ICE and CBP, restrict DHS from repurposing administrative data for surveillance. I also urge you to impose strict limits on surveillance technology acquisition, mandate congressional oversight of data sharing practices, and establish independent audits with enforceable penalties for noncompliance. These measures described above are essential to protecting constitutional rights and preventing the normalization of mass surveillance. Let’s get to work. Thank you.