DHS says ICE has 'no relationship' with spy ware maker Paragon Options

File picture dated Might 7, 2025 in Newark, New Jersey, exhibits a badge hanging over the uniform of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent.

Timothy A. Clary/AFPAFP through Getty Photographs

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Timothy A. Clary/AFPAFP through Getty Photographs

Immigration and Customs Enforcement reactivated a beforehand paused contract with spy ware maker Paragon Options final yr, which raised questions on whether or not the company was utilizing industrial spy ware to remotely hack into cell telephones and if the deal complied with a 2023 government order.

Privacy and civil rights advocates are worried the Trump administration could be persuaded to also lift restrictions placed on NSO Group, an Israeli company that makes the powerful spyware Pegasus that researchers say can turn a phone into a recording device in addition to accessing its contents.

However now the Division of Homeland Safety says ICE has no present contract or relationship with the Israeli-founded firm, which is finest identified for making a spy ware software referred to as Graphite that can be utilized to remotely infiltrate gadgets and entry encrypted messages with out targets needing to click on a hyperlink.

“ICE has no relationship with Paragon Options, Inc. or with the corporate that acquired them,” DHS stated in a press release to NPR.

ICE first entered right into a contract with the U.S. subsidiary of Paragon Options in 2024 for an unspecified product. However the Biden administration swiftly put the contract on maintain to determine whether or not it complied with a 2023 government order barring federal businesses from buying industrial spy ware that poses a major safety threat to the U.S. or threat of misuse by overseas governments.

Governments have focused opponents with spy ware

Overseas governments have repeatedly used industrial spy ware to spy on political rivals, journalists, human rights employees and different members of civil society. American politicians and officers have additionally been focused, which prompted the Biden administration to take steps to push again on the trade.

Paragon Options’ Graphite software was central to a authorities spying scandal in Italy that first got here to gentle early final yr after Meta-owned WhatsApp discovered some 90 customers of its messaging app, together with journalists and activists, had been focused with Graphite in numerous international locations.

Researchers at The Citizen Lab on the College of Toronto and Italian prosecutors have confirmed Italian journalists and activists had been amongst these focused with Graphite. Paragon Options instructed the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in June 2025 that it ended its contract with Italian intelligence businesses after Italian authorities declined the corporate’s assist to find out whether or not the software had been used towards a journalist.

Paragon Options’ founders embody former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

In late 2024, Israeli media reported that an American personal fairness agency, AE Industrial Companions, had acquired Paragon Options to merge it with REDLattice, a cybersecurity firm managed by the identical agency.

Two ICE agents film the press using smartphones in the hallway outside the immigration court at 26 Federal Plaza in New York USA on July 11 2025. The Department of Homeland Security has been acquiring new tools to identify people and monitor them.

Then, final August, below the Trump administration, ICE reactivated the Paragon Options contract. In response, Democratic lawmakers despatched DHS a collection of questions in regards to the contract and ICE’s use of spy ware.

However a discover on the Paragon Options contract on a federal procurement web site says the contract was closed out Jan. 20.

“ICE has not entered one other contract with Paragon Options, Inc,” DHS instructed NPR in a press release. The division declined to make clear whether or not or not ICE nonetheless has entry to Paragon-developed instruments, corresponding to by means of a 3rd celebration.

Neither REDLattice nor AE Industrial Companions responded to requests for touch upon Friday.

ICE has acknowledged utilizing spy ware

The information of the terminated relationship between ICE and Paragon Options comes after ICE’s departing performing Director Todd Lyons responded to questions from Democratic lawmakers in an April 1 letter during which he acknowledged he had authorized ICE’s Homeland Safety Investigations workforce to make use of a industrial spy ware software in its efforts to disrupt overseas terrorist organizations and fentanyl traffickers.

A man hold his phone up next to a Border Patrol agent dressed in fatigues and resting one arm on a vehicle parked at the curb.

“In response to the unprecedented lethality of fentanyl and the exploitation of digital platforms by transnational prison organizations, I authorized HSI’s procurement and operational use of cutting-edge technological instruments that deal with the particular challenges posed by the Overseas Terrorist Organizations’ thriving exploitation of encrypted communication platforms,” Lyons wrote.

His letter stated he had licensed that use of the software was in compliance with the 2023 government order on authorities use of business spy ware.

When NPR requested DHS if ICE brokers nonetheless had entry to Paragon-developed instruments or the software that Lyons referenced in his letter, the division offered a press release saying: “DHS isn’t going to verify or deny regulation enforcement capabilities or strategies. Underneath President Trump, ICE is utilizing all lawful instruments to take away harmful prison unlawful aliens from the U.S.”

DHS declined to reply a query asking if ICE is utilizing a distinct spy ware vendor.

Privateness advocates say questions nonetheless loom over authorities surveillance

The rising arsenal of surveillance know-how that ICE brokers are utilizing to trace immigrants in addition to protesters has raised alarm amongst privateness and civil liberties advocates.

ICE has spun a massive surveillance web. We talked to people caught in it

Advocates instructed NPR they nonetheless had questions on interpret DHS statements about its terminated relationship with Paragon Options, particularly provided that it stays unknown if the company can entry the corporate’s instruments.

“It is promising that they aren’t re-upping the contract instantly,” stated Maria Villegas Bravo, an legal professional with the nonprofit Digital Privateness Data Middle. “I am all the time cautious of vaguely worded non-association statements, although.”

Julie Mao, deputy director of Simply Futures Regulation, which is suing below the Freedom of Data Act for entry to data related to ICE’s Paragon Options contract, referred to as DHS’s newest statements “a half measure and a crimson herring,” given Lyons’ letter final month acknowledging use of a industrial spy ware software.

“If it isn’t Paragon spy ware, then what firm and spy ware does ICE use? And the way does ICE use it?” Mao instructed NPR in an e-mail. “The company ought to present a full account of its surveillance applied sciences to the American public.”