Amid crackdown on immigrants, ICE and CBP have refused to provide records on cyberweapons produced by Israeli companies

Oct 30, 2025, New York – Legal groups today filed a lawsuit to compel the Trump administration to release information about its use of powerful new surveillance tools as part of its massive effort to arrest and deport immigrants and occupy American cities. 

In July, Just Futures Law and the Center for Constitutional Rights submitted Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to ICE and CBP seeking records that could shed light on how they are using technologies provided by two Israeli companies, Cellebrite and Paragon. Both surveillance corporations have been used repeatedly by governments to target journalists, human rights defenders, and protesters. The requests cite the compelling need of immigrants, their families, and the public at large to know if and to what extent the government is using these spying tools to violate the First and Fourth Amendments, various federal statutes, and due process rights. Both ICE and CBP have improperly withheld the requested records while expanding their invasive and often abusive crackdown on both immigrants and those protesting on their behalf. 

“The public has the right to know whether and to what extent the U.S. government deploys powerful spyware to infect people’s phones, extract data, and surveil people’s daily communications,” said Julie Mao, attorney at Just Futures Law. 

The FOIA litigation targets information on U.S. government contracts with Cellebrite, which creates software and hardware to extract information from phones, and Paragon Solutions, whose spyware tool “Graphite” can reportedly “be used to hack into any mobile phone – including encrypted applications.” 

“We should not have to go to federal court to force the government to hand over these records,” said Ian Head, Manager of the Open Records Project at the Center for Constitutional Rights. “This administration wants to hide its abusive, Orwellian behavior, but we are fighting back.” 

In July 2024, Cellebrite announced its continued partnership with U.S. federal agencies, including ICE and CBP. ICE has contracted with Cellebrite since at least 2008 and has two active contracts with the company worth $11 million. CBP has also contracted with Cellebrite since at least 2008 and currently holds at least 20 Cellebrite software licenses. 

ICE entered into a contract with Paragon Solutions in September 2024, but the Biden administration paused it to verify compliance with a 2023 executive order that aimed to restrict use of spyware that posed a security risk to the U.S. government. The Trump administration lifted the stop-work order in August 2025, reactivating the contract. On October 6, members of Congress sent a letter expressing concerns about ICE’s use of Graphite. 

Privacy experts and human rights advocates across the world have raised alarms about these technologies. In March 2025, CitizenLab, based at the University of Toronto, published a report documenting how governments in countries such as Italy, Australia, Canada, and Denmark had used Paragon to spy on political activists and journalists. 

The Law Office of Amber Qureshi is co-counsel on this litigation with the Center for Constitutional Rights. 

For information, see the case page.