Here’s how ice will use Israeli spy software

The Immigration and Customs Agency has been in the process of being particularly important against immigrants under the direction of the Homeland Security Secretary named Trump Kristi calls.

Now the agency has Israeli spy software to turbule its efforts.

Ice first signed A $ 2 million contract With the company Spyware Paragon at the end of 2024 under the Biden administration.

But this contract was blocked until an examination of compliance could determine if it adheres to an executive decree signed by President Biden in 2023 which restricts the use of the government of commercial spy software.

Since then, the Israeli Espions software manufacturer has been bought by the investment capital-based in Florida AE Industrial Partners in An offer of $ 500 million.

The break on this agreement is now lifted, according to Public procurement documents Reported for the first time by Intelligence all source on substitution.

The news comes as the Trump administration increases its policy of mass deportations and ice raids, after the president promised to promulgate the “greatest deportation” in American history on the campaign campaign.

Criticism was quick to follow the news.

“Paragon technology has been poorly used by other governments around the world to target human rights defenders and political dissidents,” said Michael de Dora, director of American policies for access to the Digital Rights Defense Group, to The Now The Washington Post. “Americans should be deeply concerned about how the administration could use this new tool for domestic repression, and the administration should also be very cautious.”

Neither Paragon nor Ice responded to a request for comments from Gizmodo.

What is Paragon?

Paragon is a spy software company founded in 2019 by former TDI intelligence agents, with the help of the investor and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. In January 2024, former CIA director John Finbarr Fleming became executive president of the company, according to his Liendin profile.

At the end of 2024, the acquisition of Paragon by an American investment capital was announced and the company is now based in Virginia.

The company has been involved in Lobbying efforts in Washington, DC to appease American legislators since 2019, when it has called on a consulting firm co -founded by former officials of the Obama administration and former US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.

We do not know how ice will use paragon services, but the company’s key product is spy software called graphite that can be used to hack a user’s phone to display data, open encrypted applications such as signal and even use the Phone as listening appeal.

Paragon products attract criticism of Human rights organizations For their use against journalists and political dissidents. Earlier this year, the Italian government was exposed to using paragon products to spies on journalists and militants of migrants’ rights.

Business would have Cut all links with the Italian government after the news.

Meta-Cononstitutié Whatsapp sent to Paragon a letter of cease-up earlier this year after saying that she had disrupted a spy software campaign that targeted journalists.

Only one month before that, Whatsapp won A trial against the NSO groupAnother Israeli spying company and competitor of Paragon, after the NSO group installed malicious software on phones of more than a thousand diplomats, human rights activists, lawyers, journalists and more.

Mass monitoring of ice is now turbocharged

The ice has been amplifying its deportation efforts with technology, thanks to Trump’s “great beautiful bill” that allocated billion in the financing of the agency.

In April, the Ministry of Internal Security said that it would begin to monitor the social media accounts of immigrants for “anti -Semitism” in order to purge immigrants who criticize the actions of the Israeli government in Gaza.

In August, Noem said she wanted Buy planes dedicated to deportationsIn what would be a very unusual decision for the agency, while an internal report of July revealed that the agency wanted to follow hundreds of thousands of immigrants with ankle monitors.

The CEO of ICE Contractor and Geo Group, a private company shared during a call for results last year that the Republicans had already launched the idea of ​​monitoring seven million immigrants in the United States with a certain form of surveillance, including mobile phone monitoring. Gizmodo previously reported.

It seems that the agency may have decided to do so.