ICE has procured records linked to immigrants' tax identification numbers from a commercial data broker, according to a $10 million procurement document reviewed by 404 Media in June 2026. The contract targets Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers — ITINs — which the IRS issues to people without a Social Security Number, including those without lawful immigration status.

The Data Infrastructure

ITINs exist to allow people to file taxes and access financial services regardless of immigration status. According to the American Immigration Council, an ITIN can be obtained by individuals without lawful standing in the United States. The IRS designed the number for tax compliance purposes, not for population tracking.

Data brokers operate by aggregating names, addresses, Social Security numbers, purchase histories, and — in this case — ITIN-linked records. They then sell these compiled profiles to government agencies and other clients. The commercial data broker market has historically occupied a legal grey zone: agencies can purchase data from private companies that they could not legally collect directly through surveillance.

This procurement sits within a larger pattern. In April 2025, the IRS and DHS agreed to share immigrant data for criminal investigations, subject to statutory privacy limits. However, Bloomberg Tax reported in February 2026 that the IRS had already exceeded those limits, sharing thousands of records with ICE beyond what the agreement permitted. Buying ITIN records from a broker gives ICE a separate channel to similar data that operates outside the terms of the inter-agency agreement.

A Layered Surveillance Architecture

The ITIN purchase is one component of a broader surveillance ecosystem ICE has assembled through commercial contracts. In March 2026, 404 Media reported that Customs and Border Protection used location data sourced from online advertising networks — the data that ad exchanges buy and sell in real time — to track individuals' movements. In May 2025, 404 Media documented that local police departments were feeding ICE immigration-related searches through Flock Safety's network of AI-powered automatic license plate readers. ICE also operates a mobile identification app called Mobile Fortify, capable of identifying individuals in the field.

On the enterprise side, ICE systems integrate with Thomson Reuters' CLEAR tool, which aggregates public records, utility data, and other personal information. In April 2026, Thomson Reuters shareholders formally demanded an investigation into those contracts. CLEAR, Flock's license plate reader network, ad-tech location data, and now broker-sourced ITIN records together form a unified targeting system.

DHS Privacy Impact Assessments document these arrangements. PIA DHS/ICE/PIA-038, which covers the FALCON-DARTTS system, notes that the Specially Designated Nationals list contains personal information including names, addresses, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, tax identifiers, and passport numbers — confirming that tax numbers already appear in ICE's existing databases.

The Legal Loophole

The law that enables this entire arrangement is one civil liberties organizations have long sought to close. The Fourth Amendment restricts direct government surveillance without a warrant, but it does not govern what agencies purchase from private intermediaries. The Brennan Center for Justice has called on Congress to prohibit government agencies from buying sensitive personal data from brokers. The House passed relevant legislation in 2024, according to Cato Institute commentary from March 2026, but no comprehensive federal statute has yet closed the loophole.

The scope of these purchases — spanning advertising data, license plate readers, enterprise personal information databases, mobile biometrics, and tax identifiers — means ICE is not dependent on any single vendor or legal argument. Each contract is individually defensible under current law. Together, they amount to a surveillance capability that a decade ago would have required court orders and multi-agency negotiation to assemble, now available through standard procurement.

The ITIN case carries added significance: unlike a license plate or an advertising ID, a tax identification number comes with an implicit understanding. The IRS created ITIN specifically to encourage tax compliance among undocumented residents, and the system depends on sufficient trust that the number will not become a mechanism for targeting. That implicit assurance is now visibly at risk.