CHICAGO — The Department of Homeland Security awarded a $25 million no-bid contract to BI2 Technologies for iris scanners intended for use by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in immigration enforcement operations. DHS requested more than 1,500 iris scanners along with access to the company’s mobile app and its associated iris scan database. DHS stated that ICE officers use iris recognition technology “to assist in accurately identifying individuals encountered during immigration enforcement and removal operations, including confirming identities and backgrounds of individuals who may be subject to enforcement actions.” The agency also said it is using “every tool available” in efforts to find, detain, and deport undocumented immigrants.

The new contract is more than five times the amount of BI2 Technologies’ previous DHS contract awarded in fall 2025. In addition to iris scanners, DHS has acquired facial recognition technology, license plate readers, and location trackers as its budget increased in the past year.

Norelly Mejías Cáceres was in her Chicago apartment with her husband and first-grade son when federal immigration officers conducted a raid involving a Black Hawk helicopter. “We were in our room. We were sleeping. When they knocked on the door, they were pointing guns at us and they ordered us to leave,” Mejías Cáceres said through an interpreter. During the raid, she fainted and later recalled being photographed with a smartphone; officers asked her to open her eyes wide for the photo.

Nicole Hallett, director of the University of Chicago Immigrants' Rights Clinic, believes immigration officers likely performed an iris scan on Mejías based on the specific instruction to open her eyes wide. “There were other people who were arrested during this raid who reported having a photo taken of them and then having details about them known to the officers. Norelly is the one that we were most certain was an iris scan because of the detail about how she needed to open her eyes,” Hallett said. She added, “The only way they were able to identify people was to illegally arrest them and then use this technology in order to identify them. This is troubling because we really want law enforcement to be targeting particular people about which it has particular information. And here the government knew nothing before they pointed the device at our client and were able to call up her information from the databases.”

Cooper Quintin, senior staff technologist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, criticized ICE’s expanding surveillance capabilities. “This agency has already proven themselves to be a very rogue agency,” Quintin said. He warned, “Could ICE start doing iris scannings of everybody they detain and then add that to their database and use that for further surveillance? Yeah, absolutely.”