Democratic lawmakers demand probe into DHS warrantless location tracking

Over 70 Democratic US lawmakers on Tuesday demanded a new investigation into warrantless purchases of Americans’ location data by Department of Homeland Security agencies—including Immigration and Customs Enforcement—which critics say violate the Fourth Amendment prohibition of unwarranted search and seizure.

In a letter to DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari, 72 congressional Democrats led by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY) wrote, “Public contracting documents indicate that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) recently resumed buying Americans’ location data from a shady data broker” after the agency “ended a previous program to purchase Americans’ cellphone location data in 2023, following an investigation by your office and scrutiny from Congress.”

“Location data is extremely sensitive, and can reveal someone’s religion, their political views, medical conditions, addictions, and with whom they spend time,” the lawmakers’ letter states. “It is for that reason that ordinarily, the government must obtain a warrant from a judge in order to demand such data from phone or technology companies.”

While the Fourth Amendment generally prohibits the government from searching or obtaining Americans’ private information without a warrant, federal agencies have circumvented the proscription by buying sensitive personal data from private brokers.

“Public reports indicate that ICE has resumed its location data purchases, even though DHS has yet to adopt all of the recommendations from your prior review,” the lawmakers noted in their letter.

The letter continues:

"ICE issued a no-bid contract to the surveillance company PenLink in 2025, which included licenses for its location tracking product, Webloc, according to press reports. Webloc was developed by the controversial surveillance company Cobwebs Technologies, which was combined with Nebraska-based PenLink as part of a $200 million private equity deal in 2023. Cobwebs gained notoriety when Meta banned the company in 2021, as part of a crackdown on surveillance mercenaries after detecting the company’s customers targeting activists, opposition politicians, and government officials in Hong Kong and Mexico."

"ICE is now stonewalling congressional oversight into its purchase of location data. Sen. Wyden’s office requested a briefing from ICE soon after this contract was revealed in the press, in October, which was scheduled in December, for February 10, 2026. One day before that briefing was to take place, ICE canceled it with no explanation and without any offer to reschedule."

The letter asks:

• Whether ICE and other DHS components are purchasing illegally obtained location data about Americans;
• If so, why does DHS not have policies in place to prevent taxpayer dollars from going to contractors that have invaded Americans’ privacy in violation of federal law;
• How ICE and other DHS components have used location data and whether they have used it to investigate Americans for engaging in constitutionally protected activities, including protesting or monitoring ICE operations;
• Whether ICE and other DHS components are auditing employee access to commercial location data to identify likely patterns of abuse; and
• Why has DHS still not adopted a policy for the use of commercial location data, as you recommended in 2023?

As the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recently explained, ICE has spent $5 million on Webloc and Tangles, another location and social media surveillance product made by PenLink.

According to EFF:

Webloc gathers the locations of millions of phones by gathering data from mobile data brokers and linking it together with other information about users. Tangles is a social media surveillance tool which combines web scraping with access to social media application programming interfaces. These tools are able to build a dossier on anyone who has a public social media account. Tangles is able to link together a person’s posting history, posts, and comments containing keywords, location history, tags, social graph, and photos with those of their friends and family. PenLink then sells this information to law enforcement, allowing law enforcement to avoid the need for a warrant. This means ICE can look up historic and current locations of many people all across the US without ever having to get a warrant.

There have been several attempts to solidify restrictions on government purchase of Americans’ personal data in recent years, most notably the Fourth Amendment Is Not for Sale Act (FANFSA), which failed to pass.

Last month, Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) introduced the Security and Freedom Enhancement Act, which would reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act but is also intended to protect Americans from warrantless spying, including by closing the data broker loophole that lets law enforcement buy their way around the Fourth Amendment.

Also last month, Rep. Shontel Brown (D-Ohio) led 13 Democratic lawmakers who sent a separate letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem seeking answers about ICE’s use of PenLink surveillance technology “designed to collect and analyze cellphone location data across entire neighborhoods.”

“Mass surveillance of entire communities or city blocks raises serious questions about data privacy and potential violations of civil liberties,” Brown wrote.

“Americans should be able to trust their government to uphold the Constitution and respect fundamental rights,” she added. “Instead, DHS appears to be engaging in broad surveillance practices to monitor entire communities, violating Americans’ fundamental civil rights and civil liberties to punish dissent and advance the president’s cruel and unconstitutional mass deportation agenda.”