Paragon, an Israeli spyware company that claims to operate as an “ethical” surveillance vendor, faced scrutiny when earlier this year Italy was caught using Paragon’s tools to spy on the phones of two journalists. Paragon responded by cutting Italy off from its surveillance products, becoming the first spyware company to ever publicly name one of its customers after the misuse of its products.
Now, Paragon might face a new ethical dilemma: whether or not it will allow ICE agents to use its spyware.
A $2 million one-year contract that Paragon signed in September 2024 with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) remains under review and has not yet taken effect, and Paragon has so far not supplied ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations with its spyware tools, the company told TechCrunch.
Since taking office in January, the Trump administration has authorized ICE to carry out large-scale immigration raids across the U.S., leading to the detention of thousands of migrants — and numerous U.S. citizens — in part thanks to data stored in federal databases and using technology provided by govtech giant Palantir. Considering ICE is poised to get a significantly larger budget following the passing of Trump’s flagship Big Beautiful Bill Act into law, spyware could serve as a powerful surveillance tool in the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement operations.
With two months left before the contract expires, Paragon may never supply its spyware to ICE. But until the contract runs out on September 29, the U.S. government could approve it at any moment, forcing Paragon to make a decision about the use of its tools on U.S. soil.
Right now, the company doesn’t want to talk about this dilemma at all. When asked by TechCrunch, Paragon would not say what it plans to do if the contract passes review, or clarify what will happen with its relationship with ICE if the contract goes forward.
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Paragon’s contract with ICE has been on pause since the paperwork was signed. Homeland Security issued a near-immediate stop-work order with the goal of reviewing whether the contract complied with a Biden-era executive order. The order restricts U.S. government agencies from using commercial spyware that could (or has been) abused by foreign governments to violate human rights, or to target Americans abroad.
At the time, a Biden administration official told Wired that the U.S. government had “immediat …