ICE tabs millions for analytics help to comb through voter data

Immigration and Customs Enforcement is expecting to allocate between $2 million and $5 million to a contractor that will help it handle and analyze voter data amid increasing fraud detection efforts centered on elections, per an acquisition forecast document published Monday. 

The firm fixed price contract is expected to be awarded in the coming weeks following an estimated solicitation release next week. The work, which is in support of ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations unit, will run through the end of the month. 

The contract forecast planning document follows a request for information that ICE posted last week. The Department of Homeland Security unit began the market research process to gather information about “handling and secure delivery of publicly available voter registration files and voter history files” to support HSI “fraud detection and data segmentation activities.” The comment period lasted just three days, closing Aug. 28. 

In an attached statement of work draft, ICE said it planned to tap a contractor to acquire and document voter registration and history files from “government-identified U.S. jurisdictions,” which it described as up to all 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and any American territory that it chooses. 

Voter history files include data from general, primary, runoff and special federal elections. For states that restrict commercial data access, DHS plans to provide authorization letters, “clearing the legal hurdle,” the agency said in the documents. 

Using the workaround will prove to be a detriment to public trust, according to Tim Harper, senior policy analyst and project lead for elections and democracy at the Center for Democracy and Technology. 

“By acquiring data through commercial brokers, and finding loopholes in state restrictions on public voter data for commercial purposes, DHS’s efforts to evade voters’ privacy protections demonstrate that this mistrust is deserved,” Harper said via email. “Feeding voter registration data into HSI investigations would erode Americans’ privacy, expose them to undue scrutiny by government officials, and risk disenfranchising eligible voters as the midterms quickly approach.”

While ICE intends to restrict the collection of party affiliation data to some degree, per the draft document, the DHS unit can still request that the contractor retain and share that data. 

The forthcoming contract will arrive amid an intensifying focus on voter fraud at DHS. 

Earlier this summer, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin sent letters to four states requesting they collaborate with the agency to prevent noncitizens from voting. The call to action came after DHS restricted access to federal funding opportunities for states that choose not to comply with several outlined provisions. The law enforcement agency has also said it will enforce stricter penalties on those who illegally vote. 

The agency’s recently published webpage — titled “State Citizenship Lists Portal” — is expected to be up and running later this week.  

The Department of Justice has lent a hand in the broader efforts. But even so, the federal government has hit roadblocks in its pursuit, with judges dismissing the agency’s attempts to make states comply.

Abigail Kunkler, law fellow at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said ICE’s latest “data grab” proposal is unjustified. 

“ICE has no legal authority to obtain voters’ personal data nor to construct a nationwide database to store it in,” Kunkler said in an email. “The agency’s proposal violates a number of laws, including the Privacy Act, and tramples on our critical rights to privacy and voting.”

EPIC, along with Protect Democracy and the Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington, filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the Trump administration for its efforts to compile American voter data.

“The White House claims this database is needed to stop noncitizens from voting, but noncitizen voting is already illegal and, by every credible measure, exceedingly rare,” Protect Democracy said in its announcement of the lawsuit. 

While voter data is publicly available to some degree across the country, experts said the consolidation of the information and potential for abuse raises concern. 

“Publicly available does not mean ‘fair game’ for unlimited government surveillance,” said J.B. Branch, director of federal AI governance and technology policy for Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division. “There is an enormous difference between a voter record sitting in a state database and the federal government aggregating millions of those records, cross-referencing them against other government and commercial databases, and using algorithms to generate investigative leads about individual Americans.”

Branch also warned of the staying power and stickiness of such a system. 

“Once the government builds systems like this (connecting massive datasets, analytical tools, contractors, and law-enforcement databases) they are incredibly difficult to dismantle,” he said in an email. “That should concern every American, regardless of political affiliation.”