He Immigration and Customs Enforcement Preserve a watch on (ICE) plans to rapidly expand the use of biometric technology throughout the country through the acquisition of 1,570 new iris scannersas part of a federal contract awarded without public bidding.
The measure, revealed in official documents published on SAM.gov and taken up by the specialized media Challenge Salt Box, will allow immigration agents identify people in real time using only a smartphone camera or mobile devices connected to a private biometric data unsuitable.
According to the Declaration of Objectives of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)the system will be operated using technology developed by the company Bi2 Applied sciences, specialized in iris recognition and biometric tools used by police agencies in the United States.
The contract provides for the national deployment of the devices within 30 days of award and will grant unlimited access to the IRIS and MORIS platforms, systems capable of verifying identities and consulting arrest records in a matter of seconds.
According to federal documentation, the unsuitable data contains more than five million arrest records associated with approximately 1.5 million unique individuals, collected through agreements between Bi2 and more than 247 local law enforcement agencies nationwide.
“The system can return arrest and incarceration histories in less than a second from practically anywhere,” says the MORIS technical description cited in the report.
Iris recognition works by analyzing the unique pattern that surrounds the pupil of the human eye. Bi2 claims that its system identifies more than 265 different anatomical characteristics and can operate even if the person wears glasses or glasses.
Although the company maintains that it is a tool designed to authenticate identities and not for mass surveillance, Civil organizations and privacy experts have expressed concern about the speed with which these types of technologies are integrated into immigration and police operations.
One of the points that draws most attention is that ICE decided to avoid a competitive bidding process. The agency justified the decision by arguing that Bi2 maintains “the only national Internet-based iris biometric network” and that no other provider has access to a comparable data set.
The expansion also occurs in a context of hardening of immigration policies driven by donald trumpwhose administration declared a border emergency and strengthened technological capabilities for surveillance, identification and deportation.
The document also reveals that the DHS had already awarded Bi2 a previous contract for $4.6 million in September 2025 to deploy 200 biometric devices. The new acquisition represents a much larger expansion of that infrastructure.
Another relevant aspect is that The system is not yet FedRAMP certified, the federal standard used to verify the security of cloud platforms that handle US government luminous information.
Despite this, ICE would have immediate nationwide access to the biometric system while the company only develops a draft of compliance to obtain authorization.
The contract establishes some restrictions on data handling. For example, Bi2 may not use the information obtained by ICE for commercial purposes. nor share it with third parties. You will also need to delete images used in biometric queries after processing them and retain audit logs for at least 180 days.
However, the document does not mention independent audits, congressional oversight or external mechanisms to alter the use of the platform.
The implementation of the new scanners reinforces the increasing dependence on federal agencies in biometric systems, facial recognition and digital monitoring tools for security and immigration alteration tasks.
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