ICE is spending millions of dollars on iris scanners, expanding its arsenal of tech tools
The Department of Homeland Security is significantly increasing its use of iris scanners as part of its immigration enforcement efforts. A recent $25 million contract with BI2 Technologies aims to enhance the agency's ability to identify undocumented immigrants. This expansion has raised privacy concerns among experts regarding the collection of biometric data from detainees.
- ▪DHS awarded a $25 million no-bid contract to BI2 Technologies for iris scanning technology.
- ▪The agency requested over 1,500 iris scanners and access to a mobile app for storing iris scans.
- ▪Privacy experts have raised concerns about the potential misuse of biometric data collected from immigrants.
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| Original publisher | NPR — News |
| Canonical URL | https://www.npr.org/2026/05/27/nx-s1-5822429/ice-buys-iris-scanners-tech-tools |
| Publication time | Wed, 27 May 2026 05:00:00 -0400 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-27T09:07:56.948Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-27T09:07:56.948Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | M2qFBl_BswEI |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Immigration ICE is spending millions of dollars on iris scanners, expanding its arsenal of tech tools May 27, 20265:00 AM ET Meg Anderson A federal immigration agent uses facial recognition software to confirm an asylum seeker's identity prior to an immigration hearing on July 30, 2025, in New York. In addition, DHS is expanding its use of iris scanners to help quickly identify undocumented immigrants. Olga Fedorova/AP hide caption toggle caption Olga Fedorova/AP The Department of Homeland Security is expanding its capacity to scan irises as part of its mass deportation efforts, a move that has raised concerns among privacy experts that the agency, flush with an influx of funding, is gathering biometric data from people it detains.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at NPR — News.
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