Big Brother Is Watching: ICE’s Warrantless Phone Surveillance

Recent disclosures confirm that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is purchasing and using commercial surveillance tools that allow agents to monitor entire neighborhoods by collecting mobile phone location data—without a warrant and without judicial oversight. This is not conjecture. Oversight findings, court precedent, and ICE’s own internal documents establish the core facts. The Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General has previously found that ICE and other DHS agencies failed to implement adequate safeguards before using commercially sourced location data, and that such data was misused for purposes unrelated to authorized investigations. The Inspector General recommended stronger controls and approvals. ICE nevertheless continued—and expanded—its use of this data. Through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, civil liberties organizations also obtained ICE’s internal legal analysis justifying warrantless access to commercial location data. That document argues that no warrant is required because users supposedly “voluntarily” shared their location data with third parties through apps and online services. This theory attempts to evade constitutional limits by outsourcing surveillance to private data brokers. The Supreme Court has already rejected this logic. In Carpenter v. United States (2018), the Court held that long-term tracking of cell phone location data is so revealing—exposing a detailed chronicle of a person’s movements, associations, and habits—that it requires a warrant under the Fourth Amendment. The Court specifically warned against allowing technological convenience to erode constitutional protections. Earlier, in Riley v. California (2014), the Court recognized that modern cell phones are fundamentally different from other objects, describing them as repositories of “the privacies of life.” The ruling made clear that digital data demands stronger constitutional protection, not weaker. Allowing federal agencies to purchase functionally identical location data from brokers—rather than obtain it directly from telecom providers—undermines both the spirit and substance of these rulings. A constitutional right does not disappear simply because the government buys the information instead of compelling it. If a federal agency can quietly map the movements of every phone in a neighborhood—inferring where people live, work, worship, protest, or seek medical care—then every American becomes subject to surveillance, regardless of suspicion or wrongdoing. History shows that once such powers exist, they expand beyond their original purpose. Congress was designed to serve as the check on precisely this kind of executive overreach. We urge Congress to act immediately by: • Holding public oversight hearings on ICE’s use of commercial surveillance tools • Requiring a warrant for government access to sensitive location data, regardless of its source • Suspending funding for warrantless purchases of location data until clear statutory limits are enacted • Reaffirming that Americans do not forfeit Fourth Amendment protections simply by carrying a phone Law enforcement can be effective without abandoning constitutional guardrails. If Congress fails to act, mass digital surveillance will become normalized—quietly, permanently, and without the consent of the people.