AI-Enabled Tyranny in the Homeland

How ICE’s Emerging AI-Informed Network of Surveillance Works to Pacify the American Public

By Zane Maddux

Research Fellow

The Clay-Gilmore Institute for Philosophy, Technology, and Counterinsurgency

“The production of normalized conditions of direct state violence against targeted people, communities, and geographies—from surveillance and police terror to criminalization, displacement, incarceration, and legally/culturally sanctioned state torture, homicide, and (proto-)genocide—is fundamental to the national project, and is the tacit premise of legibility for generic American notions of freedom, democracy, safety, (civil) rights, and civil society.”^[i] — Dylan Rodriguez

In this article, I occasionally use the spelling ‘Amerika’ to detach America from its liberal mythologies, which predicate racialized subjugation and political repression. The tactics of which are essential to how ICE operations embrace the logics of counterinsurgency warfare through racialized threat construction, state terrorism, and intelligence-driven tactics of policing and surveillance, ultimately in service of white supremacist Amerikan notions of progress and protection.

Throughout the history of the United States, white America’s racialized imagination understood “Mexican-ness” to be inextricably tied to notions of “illegality.”^[ii] Contemporary political rhetoric taps into this racialized social consciousness through language such as “illegal alien”, leading to the construction of racialized immigrants as threats to American social and economic well-being. Whereas this has been the case for some time, it is only recently that ICE has amplified its tactics of state terrorism in conjunction with the emergence of its AI-based intelligence network of surveillance, reflecting the growth of the Amerikan surveillance state, which embraces these racialized logics of subordination. This emerging initiative relies on unconstitutional forms of political repression and mass surveillance driven by white supremacist notions of Amerikan progress and protection.

Many critics of ICE characterize their recent actions as clear-cut state terrorism. Last year, ICE detained at least 3,800 children, including 20 babies.^[iii] Last year, 32 people died in ICE custody. In addition, “nearly 75 percent of the 68,440 people ICE detained last year had no criminal record.”⁵ I characterize these practices as terroristic tactics producing fear and domestic docility in the service of political ends. ICE’s other tactic of inducing fear through unconstitutional political repression, is quietly being strengthened. Under Trump, ICE’s budget skyrocketed as the agency now has $85 billion at its disposal.^[iv] With this, ICE has been developing an expansive intelligence network that reflects a counterinsurgency logic through legally exceptional covert control over information in the service of pacification against political dissidents. This is how it works: ICE’s expanding surveillance apparatus operates on three levels. Data aggregation, AI-driven and technologized tools of analysis, and operationalized tactics of (legal, physical, and psychological) pacification.

Data Aggregation

Through multiple contracts and deals with private corporations, ICE is managing to aggregate massive amounts of data and build a seriously intimidating surveillance web. ICE has multiple technologies that they utilize to identify and threaten activists and civilian patrollers. One woman who was patrolling ICE in Minneapolis was threatened when ICE simply recited her name and home address to her, she said, “Their message was not subtle, right? They were in effect saying, ‘We see you. We can get you whenever we want to.’ and it did scare me.”^[v] Another woman in Portland, Maine, when recording an ICE interaction, ICE agents responded by recording her face and license plate. Upon asking why, a masked agent responded: “Cause we have a nice little database, and now you’re considered a domestic terrorist.”⁸ Prominent ways they identify someone are by license plate, via DMV data accessed “through Nlets, a nonprofit that facilitates data sharing between law enforcement agencies,” and facial recognition, via AI facial recognition apps.^[vi]Additionally, ICE has tools that can track locations via cell phone data, including locations of deportable people, and the likelihood that the location information is accurate.^[vii] This aggregation of data supplies the agency with a bank of information for its biometric and AI-based tools of analysis.

Data Analysis and AI Applications: Social Media Surveillance

ICE’s intelligence web, however, is expanding beyond the physical borders of Amerika and into the digital realm of social media, creating more opportunity for political repression. Waiving red flags of unconstitutionality, immigration attorneys are calling their access to information and their side-stepping of a need for a warrant, “very scary…because it’s through technology they’re bypassing the Fourth Amendment— [the protection against unreasonable searches and seizures].”ICE recently signed a five-year contract to use a product called Zignal Labs, described as providing the Israeli military with “tactical intelligence” to “operators on the ground” in Gaza.^[viii] Zignal Labs “leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze over 8 billion social media posts per day— allow[ing] law enforcement to ‘detect and respond to threats with greater clarity and speed.’” Wired recently reported that ICE is planning to develop a 24/7 social media monitoring team.^[ix] Other digital surveillance tools ICE has at its disposal include ShadowDragon, “a software that uses publicly available websites to map out an individual’s online activity, and Babel X, which links social media profiles and location information to a target’s Social Security Number.”^[x] “Many of these services tout that their surveillance capabilities are enhanced by artificial intelligence.”

Operationalization and Tactical Enforcement

It’s through operationalization that intelligence and analysis become action and intimidation. Recently, in a growing trend, ICE has been going after hundreds of social media accounts and the user IDs of those who criticize the agency.^[xi] What they have been doing is sending administrative subpoenas to social media corporations for the identifying information of anonymous social media accounts.^[xii] A tactic previously most commonly used against sex traffickers is now used against accounts that may anonymously criticize ICE or post the name, location, or activity of local ICE agents.^[xiii] These subpoenas, however, for the most part don’t hold up in district courts and when challenged by account owners are withdrawn.^[xiv] Despite this, these subpoenas represent the legal-political arm of ICE’s state terrorism, furthering their incitement of fear and producing pacification by discouraging political resistance. Furthermore, The Wall Street Journal notes, “Protestors, observers and passerby taken into custody by federal agents were declared terrorists and attackers in hundreds of social-media posts by U.S. officials and departments since the start of the immigration sweeps in cities.”^[xv] Of the accused, most were U.S. citizens, and close to half were not charged or convicted. However, similarly to the subpoenas, the marking of ‘terrorist’ in the face of the Amerikan government, along with mug shots, records, and identifying details, places substantial targets on the backs of these citizens, creating a threat and further opening the door to federal subjection regardless of present legal action.

Again, ICE’s matrix of control operates on three levels. The first level is data aggregation. On this level, ICE pulls from both state and private databases to form a bank of intelligence that grounds its capacity for identification and control. The second level is the agency’s tools of analysis. This is where biometrics and AI-based software are utilized to easily identify ‘threats,’ including immigrants and political dissidents. The third level is operationalization. This is where the agency’s intelligence and capacity for control transform into action through the development of a 24/7 social media monitoring team, through the service of hundreds of subpoenas, and through physical detention and incarceration.

The Logics of Counterinsurgency Warfare and The Sociogenic Processes of State Terrorism

Through state terrorism and emerging covert operatives derived from AI-enhanced intelligence and surveillance, predicated on the Amerikan phobics that construct the racialized immigrant and the political dissident as threatening, ICE’s actions assume the logic of domestic counterinsurgency warfare. Though political critics on social media may not be armed insurgents, counterinsurgency tactics aim to pacify not only insurgents but also potential insurgents, as well as tactically combat the ideological influence of dissidence, preventing insurgency from emerging whatsoever. This is precisely what ICE is doing through its expanding surveillance network and the mass administration of subpoenas.

ICE’s panopticon of surveillance and the development of state terror, either physical, digital, legal, or verbal, functions as a sociogenic (sociogeny as it refers to human identity and experience as produced through social and historical forces) practice which, through fear, both politically pacifies targeted populations and produces docility and internalized alienation from the state onto Latinx/immigrant peoples. As the multitude of modes of surveillance and control become felt by the American public, whether it’s a disinclination to patrol your community or a hesitation to post on Instagram alerting your friends and family to the presence of ICE. At the level of operationalization, legal action forms compliance, coercion forms constraint, and psychological pacification becomes internalized: The sociogenic feedback loop, supported through narratives of safety and security, normalizes domination and successfully serves Amerikan mythologies of progress predicated on the subjugation of non-whites, ‘lesser’ races, and elimination of dissent.

“The oppressor must be harassed until his doom. He must have no peace by day or by night. The slaves have always outnumbered the slavemasters. The power of the oppressor rests upon the submission of the people…Divided, confused, fighting among ourselves, we are still in the elementary stage of throwing rocks, sticks, empty wine bottles and beer cans at racist cops who lie in wait for a chance to murder.”^[xvi] — Huey P Newton

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^[i] Dylan Rodríguez, White Reconstruction: Domestic Warfare and the Logics of Genocide (New York: Fordham University Press, 2020), 45.

^[ii] Nicholas De Genova (2023) “Look, an Illegal Alien!”: the rhetorics of migrant

“Illegality” and the racialization of Mexicanness, Quarterly Journal of Speech, 109:1, 91-93,

^[iii] Ibsais Ahmad, “What ICE Is Doing to America Is Familiar to Me as a Palestinian,” Al Jazeera, January 27, 2026, https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/1/27/what-ice-is-doing-to-america-is-familiar-to-me-as-a-palestinian ⁴ Ibid.

^[iv] Bill Chappell, “ICE Budget and Funding Debates in Congress,” NPR, January 21, 2026, https://www.npr.org/2026/01/21/nx-s1-5674887/ice-budget-funding-congress-trump

^[v] Kat Lonsdorf, Jude Joffe-Block, Meg Anderson, “ICE has spun a massive surveillance web. We talked to people caught in it.” NPR, March 5, 2026, https://www.npr.org/2026/03/04/nx-s1-5717031/ice-dhs-immigrants-surveillance-confrontation-deportation-mobile-f ortify ⁸ Ibid.

^[vi] Ibid.

^[vii] Ibid.

^[viii] Katya Schwenk, “ICE Just Spent Millions on a Social Media Surveillance AI Program,”October 25, 2025.

https://truthout.org/articles/ice-just-spent-millions-on-a-social-media-surveillance-ai-program/ ¹³ Ibid.

^[ix] Ibid.

^[x] Ibid. ¹⁶ Ibid.

^[xi] Sheera Frenkel;, Mike Isaac, “Homeland Security Wants Social Media Sites to Expose Anti-Ice Accounts,” February 13, 2026https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/dhs-anti-ice-social-media.html

^[xii] Ibid.

^[xiii] Ibid.

^[xiv] Ibid.

^[xv] Brenna T. Smith Et. al., “ Americans Are Now a Target in Trump’s Immigration Crackdown,” March 23, 2026. https://www.wsj.com/us-news/immigration-protests-noem-minneapolis-0b8bd496?st=FCz9aT&reflink=article_copy URL_share

^[xvi] Huey P. Newton, “In Defense of Self Defense,” 1967.