WASHINGTON — In August 1975, Sen. Frank Church went on Meet the Press and warned that the government’s surveillance capability “could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left.”
Fifty-one years later, the turning is happening on a procurement portal.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement wants to hire about 142 contractor “Intelligence Research Specialists,” each expected to hold a Top Secret clearance with SCI eligibility, for a shop inside its deportation arm called ERO Overwatch and National Security Enforcement. ERO ONE, for short. The DHS forecast prices it at more than $100 million, with a solicitation expected Dec. 10, an award window of January through March 2027, and a forecast completion date of Feb. 24, 2032.
This is not an app. It is people. The draft statement of work ICE posted Sept. 18 puts 94 analysts across 24 ERO field offices, from Boston to San Diego, and 48 more at ICE headquarters and three national targeting and support centers in Vermont and California. Their mission, in the government’s own words: “the collection, exploitation, evaluation, analysis, integration, and reporting of intelligence information.”
Read that list twice. Exploitation is the second word.
Risk No. 1: Your life, drawn as a link chart
Section 4.6 of the draft tasks analysts with mapping relationships “among individuals, organizations, locations, events, activities, data points, and other entities.” It asks for “known, reported, or potential relationships,” “associations,” and “temporal or geographic connections.” The deliverables: link charts, network diagrams, timelines.
For a mixed-status family, that is the whole household. The cousin who co-signed the lease. The parish that runs the food pantry. The coworker who gives rides to the job site.
Section 4.10 then routes that work into “operational planning”: the research ICE does before it shows up at a door. Analysts would also sit inside the centers that already turn government databases into arrest leads, including the National Criminal Analysis and Targeting Center and the Law Enforcement Support Center in Williston, Vermont, and the Pacific Enforcement Response Center in Laguna Niguel, California.
The draft never says how many degrees out from an enforcement subject an analyst may travel, or when a U.S. citizen’s name is allowed onto the chart.