The Trump Administration is considering a nationwide intelligence operation to bolster Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deportation efforts, with $100 million plans to deploy more than 140 specialists to analyze classified and unclassified information from locations across the country, federal procurement records show.
The proposed program, known as Enforcement and Removal Operations Overwatch and National Security Enforcement (ERO One), would provide intelligence and analytical support to ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) division.
ICE anticipates needing approximately 142 Intelligence Research Specialists and two project managers at headquarters and designated field locations across the country, the records show.
A spokesman for ICE told Newsweek that "due to the exponential increase of threats and violence against personnel, ERO is now operationalizing the Overwatch program."
Supporters say ERO One would give immigration officers greater intelligence support to identify enforcement targets, assess public safety threats and improve officer safety. Critics, however, warn that ICE's ability to analyze sensitive information could significantly expand the agency's domestic surveillance capabilities.
The notice says the specialists would conduct work including all-source analysis, threat and trend analysis, and network and relationship analysis.
Newsweek has listed the locations identified by ICE in the procurement documents and the planned distribution of intelligence specialists across the country.
They include Atlanta, Boston, Buffalo, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, El Paso, Harlingen, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, New York City, Newark, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Paul, Washington, D.C., Williston, Vermont, and Laguna Niguel, California.
The largest allocations listed in the documents are 15 specialists at Potomac Center North in Washington, D.C.; 12 at the National Criminal Analysis and Targeting Center in Williston, Vermont; 12 at the Law Enforcement Support Center in Williston; and nine at the Pacific Enforcement Response Center in Laguna Niguel, California. The remaining positions are distributed among ICE areas of responsibility around the country.
What Would ERO ONE Do?
According to the Statement of Work, specialists would research and analyze information from authorized sources, identify trends, patterns, and relationships, assess threats and intelligence gaps, and prepare intelligence products and briefings.
The work may involve information from multiple classified and unclassified sources, as well as law-enforcement sensitive information, personally identifiable information, operational information, and other protected government information.
The procurement documents say contractor personnel could be required to hold Top Secret clearances and be eligible for access to Sensitive Compartmented Information.
One part of the proposal calls for "network, link, and relationship analysis."
The Statement of Work says specialists would conduct research to identify and assess relationships among individuals, organizations, locations, events, activities, data points, and other entities relevant to established ERO intelligence requirements.
Analysts could examine known, reported, or potential relationships, recurring patterns, organizational structures, associations, and geographic or temporal connections.
The document says contractors would provide analytical support only and would not have authority to make final decisions on investigations, targeting, enforcement, detention or other government actions. Those decisions would remain with government officials.
ERO oversees immigration enforcement, including arrests, detention and removals. Homeland Security Investigations, ICE's other main operational arm, focuses on transnational crime and criminal investigations. Both divisions have played key roles in President Donald Trump’s nationwide deportation campaign.
ICE said the overewatch program would work with HSI and the agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility to identify and report threats against officers, civilian personnel, contractors, detainees, and facilities.
Scott Mechowski, a former ICE deputy field office director in New York and visiting fellow for the Mass Deportation Coalition, told Newsweek that "ERO has relied on intelligence for years."
"Targeting, officer safety, and tracking transnational criminals and public safety threats all depend on knowing who you're dealing with before your officers knock on a door," Mechowski said. "Officers and field offices are drowning in leads and data, and analysts are what turn that into something usable. Adding trained analysts who can do the research lets deportation officers spend more time doing the actual enforcement."
Ricky Murray, a former senior official at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said the program reflects a broader push to use technology to bring together government data and support immigration enforcement decisions.
“Government immigration systems contain extraordinary amounts of information, often spread across databases that do not communicate particularly well with one another,” Murray told Newsweek. “Technology that can connect these systems and identify relevant information could dramatically improve efficiency.”
But Murray cautioned that the reliability of the underlying information and how it is interpreted would be crucial. “The danger is that technology can give questionable information an appearance of certainty simply because it was generated through a sophisticated analytical system,” he said.
“It must also be how accurately that information is interpreted, how thoroughly conclusions are verified, and whether appropriate safeguards exist before those conclusions affect someone's life.”
An ICE spokesman said, "“ICE protects America through criminal investigations and enforcing immigration laws to preserve national security and public safety and employs technology and intelligence techniques to identify, locate and arrest national security and public safety threats.
“ICE and its partners need to stay ahead of criminals and terrorists, which evolve just as rapidly as the technology they use to support their criminal activities. As authorities develop countermeasures, terrorist groups and cartels adapt with their own countermeasures, creating an ongoing cycle of tactical evolution.
"ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations intelligence-driven approach ensures that the agency continues to remove dangerous illegal aliens from the country while actively preventing future attacks through comprehensive intelligence collection and analysis."
Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union, told The American Prospect that the proposal looked "dangerously like the construction of an internal spying agency," calling it "a nightmare in the making."
The procurement documents describe ERO ONE as providing intelligence support for ERO operations involving national security, public safety, officer safety, and detention-related activities, with provisions governing privacy and protected information. The program remains at the procurement stage: ICE’s Request for Information says it is for market research and acquisition planning and is not a solicitation or commitment to award a contract, meaning the proposed 142 specialists have not been established by these documents as hired or deployed.