Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is set to renew and significantly expand its contract with a subsidiary of data broker Thomson Reuters, granting the agency continued access to surveillance and monitoring tools that it says are needed to identify "unaccompanied minors" and combat "fraud of government funds", including alleged voter and immigration fraud. The move, disclosed in a federal contract register document, extends the reach of the Trump administration's immigration crackdown into areas typically outside ICE's remit, since the welfare of unaccompanied children usually falls to the Department of Health and Human Services rather than immigration enforcement.

The new contract would be worth up to $25 million a year for up to five years, a sharp rise from the previous five-year deal, which totalled $24 million overall. It would preserve ICE's access to Thomson Reuters databases including CLEAR, which offers public records and licence-plate reader data, CABS, which tracks recent arrests and incarcerations with real-time location alerts, and Westlaw court records, alongside tools enabling "continuous monitoring" of up to a million individuals, risk scoring and "academic risk flagging". The Department of Homeland Security describes Thomson Reuters Special Services as the only contractor able to provide this scale of monitoring, though neither it nor ICE explained how the data would specifically be used to detect fraud or why ICE would take on responsibilities usually handled by other agencies. Thomson Reuters said its role may include vetting sponsors of unaccompanied children to protect their safety, but ICE, DHS and HHS did not respond to requests for comment.