Clearview AI — Facial Recognition for ICE

Clearview AI provides ICE with facial recognition technology backed by a proprietary database of 50+ billion facial images scraped from the internet – described in procurement documents as “the largest and most comprehensive facial recognition database available.”

ICE Contract

In September 2025, ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) finalized a $9.2 million contract with Clearview AI. The contract provides biometric matching software for two stated investigative missions:

Child sexual exploitation cases
Investigations into assaults on law enforcement officers

The contract includes a one-year base period and three one-year extension options, creating a potential long-term partnership.

The contract was awarded as a sole-source deal, with ICE preparing the justification in August 2025. ICE cited Clearview’s unique database and technology as the reason no competitive bidding was required.

CBP Contract

On February 11, 2026, US Customs and Border Protection signed a one-year $225,000 contract with Clearview AI for “tactical targeting” and counter-network analysis.

Broader Federal Adoption

The FBI, Army, US Marshals Service, and DHS collectively hold nearly $10 million in Clearview contracts. The US Army renewed a Clearview contract for special operations forces in early 2026.

Oversight Concerns

WBEZ Chicago reported in November 2025 that ICE agents use Clearview with “little apparent oversight,” noting that the facial recognition app is powerful enough that Illinois police are barred from using it under state biometric privacy law – but federal ICE agents operating in Illinois face no such restriction.

Legal and Ethical Issues

Clearview AI has faced legal challenges globally for scraping billions of photos from social media without consent. The company has been fined in the EU, UK, and Australia. Despite this, US federal agencies have expanded their use of the technology.

Surveillance Ecosystem

Clearview AI is part of ICE’s broader surveillance apparatus alongside palantir-technologies (which integrates biometric and case data via palantir-immigrationos-2025), shadowdragon (social media monitoring), and babel-street (location tracking). These tools collectively feed the ice-contract-pipeline.

Detention Pipeline