BI2 Technologies, based in Plymouth, has secured the largest contract with ICE in the state, worth $25 million. That deal, signed in May, is five times the size of BI2’s prior ICE contract. It’s for a mobile phone app that lets agents scan people’s eyes and identify them using facial recognition. It also gives ICE access to a database of 5 million booking records, as well as a searchable dataset of driver licenses and license plates.
BI2 executives did not respond to interview requests or questions about how they landed the contracts. Prior to this, the company had primarily held contracts with local law enforcement.
During Trump’s first term, BI2 donated iris scanners to sheriff’s departments in 31 counties on the US-Mexico border. When Trump returned to office, the company hired Ballard Partners, a lobbying firm whose founder, Brian Ballard, is involved with Trump’s inner circle.
BI2 has spent $330,000 to get the word out about its technology to the Department of Homeland Security and movers on Capitol Hill – eventually landing a no-bid contract; ICE’s procurement documents say its needs could be met only by “proprietary solutions offered exclusively by BI2 Technologies.”
A DHS spokesperson, in a statement, said contract decisions are reviewed to ensure the technology ICE adopts is “consistent with all applicable law enforcement policies and standards.”
The spokesperson declined to comment on how the iris-scanning technology is specifically being used. In general, the statement said, the agency uses tech to help “in the arrest of criminal gang members, child sex offenders, murderers, drug dealers, identity thieves and more, all while respecting civil liberties and privacy interests.”
Ballard did not respond to a request for comment.
Jessica Tillipman, associate dean for Government Procurement Law Studies at George Washington University, is tracking ICE’s multibillion-dollar spending. She said she has seen a spike in no-bid contracts with DHS. And while they don’t explicitly signal wrongdoing, she said they do raise questions about transparency in a process that was once meant to be apolitical.
The requirements are drafted in a way that’s “so narrow that only one company can actually meet their criteria or perform it,” she said.
Another Massachusetts company, Pittsfield-based armored vehicle manufacturer Lenco Industries, is a veteran of federal contracts. It first sold a BearCat vehicle, a steel-plated truck with ballistic glass that can withstand assault rifle fire and grenades, to DHS in 2008, per USASpending. It has secured four contracts with ICE during Trump’s second term, totaling roughly $5.2 million, including a $400,000 vehicle for a special response team in Kansas City.
Last September, ICE posted a notice of intent to make a sole-source BearCat purchase valued at $8.3 million. (The agency eventually turned to a Canadian company to buy 20 armored vehicles.)
Now, Lenco’s vehicles are in the backdrop of ICE’s promotional material and operations in neighborhoods across the country, depicting federal agents riding atop a truck and brandishing an automatic weapon.
The company did not respond to Globe questions on how many vehicles it sold to the agency or how they are being deployed. A DHS spokesperson also declined to comment.
While ICE’s aggressive tactics and use of force have drawn scrutiny across the country, that’s not stopping companies from lining up for contracts with the agency.
“They are still attempting to maximize shareholder profit,” said Clark Warner, a professor at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business who focuses on organizational ethics. “It doesn’t occur to them that their profit could be damaged by a backlash because they are working with a highly politicized agency,” he added. “Maybe they should.”
Not every company is publicly touting its ICE contracts.
Hale, the billionaire owner of Quincy-based Granite Telecommunications, most often gets headlines for his philanthropy. His company also holds the state’s third-largest ICE contract, totaling $9 million.
Granite’s ICE contract was signed in 2022, during former president Joe Biden’s administration, and runs until July of 2027. It provides basic telecommunication services, such as landline phones and alarm systems in federal office buildings.
The telecom company’s ICE business is part of a much larger, heavily regulated program — dubbed Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions — which offers contracts to a slew of government agencies. The firm holds more than 400 such contracts, according to USASpending.
Granite declined to comment.
Perhaps a better-known local company, Boston Dynamics of Waltham, does not appear on the top ICE vendor list — but immigration agents have four of its dancing dog-like robots. That was part of a $1.3 million deal in which Connecticut-based Radeco modified the Boston Dynamics robots with military-grade add-ons such as a robotic arm, thermal camera, and sensors for explosive materials. Radeco’s modified version of the robot is nicknamed Cerberus, after the mythical three-headed dog that guards the gates of hell.
In a statement, a Boston Dynamics spokesperson said the robot’s purpose is to keep people safe, and that DHS must follow the company’s terms and conditions, which prohibit weaponization of the robots or using them for harm or intimidation.
But hundreds of Boston Dynamics employees have expressed dismay over the Cerberus deal. They sent a letter in September to top executives asking them to end the contract.
“We cannot be proud of working at BD when that work is being used by a government agency that brutalizes civilians,” said the petition, the text of which was shared with the Globe.
A company spokesperson said nearly half the signatures were submitted anonymously, and that those protesting the contract are a minority of Boston Dynamics’s roughly 1,500 employees.
The company has hosted ethics discussions on the issue, the spokesperson said. But in a note to employees reviewed by the Globe, then-interim chief executive Amanda McMaster asked workers to “respect and accept this decision, even if you do not agree with it.”
Outside Boston Dynamics, there’s also anger over the use of the robot dogs by ICE.
Barbara Katzenberg and the De-ICE Action Network Now have organized rallies outside the company’s headquarters, where dozens of people, some clad in canine masks, waved signs criticizing the company’s ties to ICE.
Katzenberg, 76, called Boston Dynamics “naive” for believing ICE will stand by ethical principles. A campaign by the De-ICE group last July helped persuade Rhode-Island-based Citizens Bank to roll back its dealings with private prison firms that contract with ICE.
While Massachusetts companies have seen a surge in federal spending, national numbers are much higher.
Business boomed for private airline broker CSI Aviation, which has reaped a whopping $1.3 billion in obligated funds from ICE since 2025. The Texas-based firm facilitates ICE’s deportation flights, including at Hanscom Field in Massachusetts.
Governor Maura Healey earlier this year urged private airlines to stop using Hanscom for ICE’s deportation flights.
“You have a choice to either continue profiting from ICE’s unlawful tactics that are depriving people of due process and separating parents from their children, or you can stand with the people and communities you say that you serve,” she wrote in a March letter to Tony Lefebvre, chief executive of flight services provider Signature Aviation.
But Healey has yet to offer the same scrutiny to local companies. A spokesperson for the governor declined to comment.
Charles Tiefer, professor emeritus at the University of Baltimore Law School, has dedicated years to investigating wartime contracting in Afghanistan and Iraq as a government-appointed commissioner. The current spending spree is reminiscent of the contracting windfalls during those wars.
“DHS has such a surplus of money and no accountability for it. It’s just eager to spend,” Tiefer said.
Yogev Toby can be reached at yogev.toby@globe.com. Scooty Nickerson can be reached at scooty.nickerson@globe.com.
