U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to use a hub in Vermont to bolster its digital surveillance capabilities as the agency ramps up operations across the country at the direction of leaders in President Donald Trump’s administration.
According to federal contracting records, which were first reported by the technology magazine Wired, ICE plans to hire at least a dozen contracted workers for the effort at its National Criminal Analysis and Targeting Center, which is located in an unassuming business park in Williston. In addition, the agency would hire at least 16 contracted workers at a similar intelligence-gathering facility in Santa Ana, Calif.
The Vermont center is off Industrial Avenue, located a short drive from Patrick Leahy Burlington International Airport. It is largely unmarked from the outside and, according to Wired, handles investigations from across the eastern part of the country.
Workers there already generate leads for ICE’s Office of Enforcement and Removal Operations, according to agency documents, compiling information field agents can then use to locate people ICE is targeting for deportation and other enforcement.
Draft plans published last week state, however, that ICE has had “limited success” using social media platforms and other information that’s available on the open web — which includes sites accessible to the public via search engines — for enforcement. The plans refer to an existing contractor though do not provide any specifics about it.
Under the latest plans, a contractor would use sites such as Facebook, Instagram and X — and could, in addition, use powerful online commercial, law enforcement and federal government databases — to generate leads about “individuals who pose a danger to national security, risk public safety or otherwise meet ICE enforcement priorities.”
Details collected could include people’s social media posts and the locations tagged in them, according to the plans. The contractor could also be asked to find information about targeted people’s “associates,” including family members and coworkers, for the purpose of determining someone’s whereabouts, the plans from last week state.
The documents are a Request for Information, meaning the government is looking for details on the feasibility of its plan but is not yet actively soliciting contractors. Work on the plan could begin in May 2026, per the records.
ICE’s media relations office did not immediately respond to a request for comment or additional information about its plans for contracted work at the Industrial Avenue office.
That location is just one of several ICE facilities in Vermont. They include another one close by in Williston, next to the Maple Tree Place shopping center, called its Law Enforcement Support Center. That office is ICE’s national hub for coordinating with other law enforcement agencies and also houses the infrastructure for a major tip line.
ICE also has a field office in St. Albans where it holds mandatory meetings with people it is monitoring and, in at least one recent high-profile case, held someone the agency had previously arrested overnight.
The plans are not the first time ICE has sought contracts to bolster its surveillance operations. Earlier this year, for instance, the agency inked an agreement with Palantir Technologies, the firm co-founded by the billionaire Peter Thiel, to build software aimed at streamlining the process of identifying and deporting people the agency is targeting. The plan has faced sharp criticism from privacy and immigrant rights advocates.
James Duff Lyall, head of the American Civil Liberties Union of Vermont, said in an emailed statement Monday that the plans for the Williston office warranted greater scrutiny to ensure they would not undermine people’s privacy.
“Any increase in ICE presence or activity must be scrutinized, given the agency’s long history of abuse, lack of accountability, and disregard for our constitutional rights,” Lyall said. “That includes its reported expansion of digital surveillance efforts, a project which will be staffed in our own backyard and will involve surveilling the online activity of large swaths of the general public.”
