Corporate giants provide the technological and financial backbone for ICE operations

Large-scale anti-immigrant operations conducted by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are being sustained by the logistical and technological support of major American corporations.

The killing of Alex Pretti last Saturday marked the latest in a series of violent and fatal incidents involving federal agents participating in an ICE operation in Minneapolis. According to reports from Popular Information, just hours after Pretti’s death, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy was at the White House for a screening of Melania, a documentary produced by First Lady Melania Trump.

As Jassy and other guests arrived, a military band played “Melania’s Waltz,” a piece composed specifically for the film. Attendees were served popcorn in commemorative black-and-white boxes by gloved waiters. Amazon reportedly paid $59 million for the rights to the project, with the bulk of the funds going directly to Melania Trump. According to industry insider Matt Belloni, Amazon is spending an additional $35 million to promote the film.

Despite the massive budget, Amazon declined to share the film with critics ahead of its release. While the project is almost certain to result in a loss of tens of millions of dollars for the company, the expenditure is viewed as a calculated cost of maintaining favor with President Donald Trump and his administration.

Amazon and Palantir partnership

Amazon holds billions of dollars in government contracts and provides much of the technological backbone for ICE’s surveillance and deportation efforts. Amazon Web Services (AWS) hosts the Investigative Case Management (ICM) database, a tool used by ICE to target and deport immigrants.

Developed by Palantir, the ICM integrates a vast ecosystem of public and private data to track individuals. This data includes immigration history, family ties, personal connections, addresses, phone records, and biometric identifiers. AWS receives millions of dollars annually from the federal government to host the ICM through its partnership with Palantir.

Last April, the Trump administration awarded Palantir a new $30 million contract to develop “ImmigrationOS,” an advanced tool designed to further bolster ICE’s deportation capabilities. Industry analysts suggest ImmigrationOS likely runs on AWS, given the strategic partnership between the two companies.

Furthermore, AWS hosts a massive surveillance system for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), ICE’s parent agency. Known as the Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology System (HART), this $6 billion program is designed to store the personal and biometric data of over 270 million people, including 6.7 million iris scans and 1.1 billion facial images.

In a 2022 letter addressed to Amazon, critics argued that by hosting the HART database, AWS was directly facilitating the creation of an invasive biometric system that fuels surveillance and leads to human rights abuses. Despite calls for Amazon to withdraw its support for the database while it was still in development, the company has remained silent.

When Amazon employees urged then-CEO Jeff Bezos to sever ties with ICE in 2018, he defended the company’s position. “There is no other country that everyone is trying to get into. I’d let them in. I love them, I want them all in,” Bezos said at the time. “But this is a great country and it needs to be defended.”

This stance stands in stark contrast to Amazon’s corporate website, which claims the company supports refugee and humanitarian-based immigrant populations because it “understands the challenges they face in the US.” In November 2025, Amazon announced a $50 billion investment to expand cloud and artificial intelligence services for the federal government. ICE and related agencies are well-positioned to ensure Amazon sees a return on that investment. Last year, Trump signed a massive budget bill allocating more than $170 billion for border and internal security over a four-year period.

Citizens Bank

Since Trump’s return to the White House for a second term, the number of immigrants held in ICE custody has surged. From fewer than 40,000 in January 2025, the detainee population has climbed to over 73,000 today. This spike has created a massive demand for private prison companies like GEO Group and CoreCivic to construct new detention facilities.

In 2019, several major financial institutions—including JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, SunTrust, BNP Paribas, and Fifth Third Bancorp—pledged to stop working with the private prison industry. While Bank of America and SunTrust have since softened their policy stances to provide refinancing to detention firms in certain cases, Citizens Financial Group, which operates Citizens Bank, has continued to finance the construction of private prisons directly.

In July 2025, Citizens provided a $450 million revolving credit line to GEO Group. This followed an earlier move in March 2025, when Citizens issued $500 million in bonds for CoreCivic. On its website, Citizens claims to be “committed to strengthening communities” and working to “advance social equity.”

AT&T

In September 2024, AT&T signed a 10-year, $147 million contract with the DHS to provide “mission-critical communications services.” The deal grants ICE and other DHS agencies “end-to-end voice priority” on AT&T’s commercial wireless network. In August, the Trump administration awarded AT&T an $11 million sole-source contract to provide “data analytics and support services” specifically for ICE.

AT&T has marketed FirstNet, its dedicated network for first responders, to the federal government by highlighting its ability to use “photos, real-time voice/video streams, and other state, local, or federal agency databases” to assist in identifying undocumented immigrants.

AT&T’s Human Rights Policy, last updated in August 2025, states that the company aims “not to be complicit in human rights violations.” The policy further emphasizes that “all people, regardless of status or circumstances, deserve the dignity and freedom that human rights protections afford.”

Last November, activists in Chicago accused AT&T of “pocketing public money” from ICE, an agency they claim “terrorizes the public with masked, unidentified agents operating without search warrants.”