ICE Is Using Data Broker Tools to ‘Identify Unaccompanied Minors’ and ‘Fraud’

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) intends to renew its contract with a subsidiary of data broker giant Thomson Reuters at a rate of up to $25 million per year for up to five years in order to accommodate an urgent, “multiplied” demand for data that can identify “unaccompanied minors” as well as anyone involved with “any type of fraud of government funds,” according to a document published in a federal contract register on Tuesday.

“Due to ICE’s re-prioritized mission,” the document reads, “there is a need for the data to be readily accessible to support the presidential mandate of the identification of Voters fraud, Immigration Fraud, and National Security.”

The document does not explain why ICE would need to identify unaccompanied minors, which is typically the remit of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), or how Thomson Reuters’ data would be used to combat voter fraud or immigration fraud. When reached for comment, Thomson Reuters spokesperson Kat Hanley tells WIRED that its identification work for ICE may include “vetting the sponsors of children entering the country” to ensure the children’s “welfare and safety.”

The annual payment of $25 million marks a dramatic increase in the value of Thomson Reuters’ work with ICE. The previous equivalent contract was worth $24 million total over a five-year period.

Though ICE has been buying data from Thomson Reuters since 2008, the contract justification indicates that the Trump administration hopes to expand the scope of how Thomson Reuters data is used by federal immigration officials. It is yet another indicator of the ever-expanding reach of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) claims in the document that Thomson Reuters Special Services (TRSS) is “the only contractor” that can provide “continuous monitoring of up to one million individuals and entities” with “event-driven monitoring,” “real-time alerts,” and “model-based risk scoring.” The document did not provide examples of said events or risks.

The contract would maintain ICE’s access to several proprietary Thomson Reuters databases, the document says. One of these databases is the Consolidated Lead Evaluation and Reporting (CLEAR), which provides access to public records and “license plate reader data,” which is sourced from on-road surveillance cameras. Since 2017, Thomson Reuters has sourced this data from Vigilant Solutions, an automated license-plate-reader company that is now owned by Motorola.

Another Thomson Reuters database named in the document is the Continuous Alerting Batch Solution (CABS), which ICE says pulls records about individuals who were recently incarcerated or came into contact with law enforcement, including “real-time alerting on last known location data.”

The contract would also maintain ICE’s access to Westlaw, Thomson Reuters’ court records database. ICE will also have access to Real Time Incarceration and Arrest Records (RTIA and Thomson Reuters Special Services Entity Authority (TEA), which feeds into a “risk intelligence” platform called RAPID, according to Thomson Reuters’ website.

The software bundle that Thomson Reuters sells to ICE, the document claims, enables the agency to conduct “continuous monitoring,” “court document retrieval,” “risk assessments,” and “academic risk flagging.” The document does not explain what constitutes an academic risk.

Representatives for ICE, DHS, and HHS did not respond to requests for comment. A White House spokesperson referred WIRED to DHS and ICE.

Unaccompanied minors, children who arrive in the US alone, are not the purview of ICE. Care for these children is overseen by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which is under the umbrella of HHS and operates independently from immigration enforcement. However, in February last year, ICE agents were granted further access to the database that ORR uses to track unaccompanied minors.

A government employee with knowledge of immigration processes says that the Thomson Reuters proprietary databases will now be used by DHS agents, including ICE, to background-check potential sponsors for unaccompanied minors. They spoke to WIRED on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.

A sponsor is generally a parent or other adult family member who is responsible for providing food, shelter, and medical care for the minor as they await immigration proceedings. The sponsor must also agree to make sure the child attends all necessary immigration appointments and court proceedings. But this level of DHS involvement is a departure from how the process has historically worked.

“With every passing day, it becomes more difficult to discern where ORR ends and ICE begins,” says Jason Boyd, vice president of federal policy at Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), a legal services organization that works with unaccompanied minors.

Historically, ORR staff would conduct background checks on sponsors, with a specific eye toward indicators that could put a child in jeopardy, such as whether a sponsor appears on registered sex offender lists, had a history of child abuse and neglect, or appeared in state criminal databases. Members of DHS were not involved in this process. But last year, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), which oversees ORR, released new guidance requiring that all sponsors and other adult members of their households be fingerprinted and stipulating that only “unexpired and legible photocopies of identification documents” would be accepted. All sponsors and "alternate caregivers” are also now required to have a Social Security number or individual tax identification number, a challenge for “mixed-status” families where some members may be undocumented but others are not.

Boyd says these increased requirements and the risk for scrutiny from DHS have narrowed the pool of potential sponsors for unaccompanied children, drastically increasing the time that children spend in government custody.

“Sponsor vetting is essential, but the Trump administration's policies and practices don't promote safe sponsor placements, they obstruct them by all but compelling unaccompanied children’s indefinite government detention,” he says. The average length of an unaccompanied child’s stay in ORR custody as of spring 2026 is now over 190 days, according to KIND. “That is an extraordinarily protracted period that comes at the expense of unaccompanied children’s health, safety, and due process,” says Boyd.

Shortly into Trump’s second term, there was a noticeable shift in how the government treats the sponsors of migrant children. In April 2025, agents from DHS and other law enforcement agencies conducted a series of “welfare checks” on unaccompanied children at the homes of their sponsors. In October, DHS attempted to get unaccompanied teenagers to agree to self-deport by offering them $2,500 to voluntarily leave the country. But lawyers who spoke to WIRED at the time claimed that DHS had indicated that children who refused to take the offer could see their sponsors or families deported.

“We have seen the Trump administration systematically target unaccompanied children and their loved ones for immigration enforcement, and too often we have seen ORR work hand-in-glove with ICE to advance the Trump administration’s immigration agenda,” says Boyd.

Last month, three legal services organizations that work specifically with unaccompanied minors say ICE and HHS agents attempted to enter their offices asking to see their financial records, in what representatives for the organizations said was an intimidation tactic. About two weeks later, ACF listed a proposed rule in the Federal Register that would authorize the agency to examine unaccompanied children for “gang-related tattoos and markings,” and establish stricter background check requirements for potential sponsors. (The mandatory comment period for the proposed rule ends August 25.)

ACF claimed that the rule is an attempt to address “suspected document fraud, identity fraud, identity misrepresentation, alias use, shared contact information, and exploitation” in the sponsor system for unaccompanied minors. It’s unclear if this is the same “fraud” referenced in the TRSS contract justification published on Tuesday.

However, the proposed rule could also be seen in the context of a greater crackdown on the sponsor system that was authorized in the One Big Beautiful Bill, passed in July 2025. Stipulations in the law propose a $5,000 "apprehension fee” for all migrants, including unaccompanied minors, who arrive at the southern border, as well as a slew of other fees to apply and wait for asylum and renew work authorization documents. In June, The Washington Post reported that the ORR had preemptively asked the Pentagon to audit its contracts to nonprofits that shelter, care for, and provide representation to unaccompanied children before they are reunited with sponsors or family members. These are services ORR is legally mandated to provide, either directly or through funding third-party organizations.

Though Thomson Reuters is a longtime ICE contractor, some employees have recently begun to push back against its relationship with the controversial agency. In March, about 200 employees signed a letter urging the company to not renew its contract with ICE after it was originally scheduled to expire in May. (The contract’s end date has since been extended to the end of August.) Hanley, the Thomson Reuters spokesperson, tells WIRED that the company takes employee concerns “seriously” and that it provides “clear channels for colleagues to raise issues.” Hanley adds that the company had conducted “1:1 conversations, small group listening sessions (in person and virtual), updates on the company intranet, and a company All Hands” in order to address its products and any “misconceptions” about them.

About 14 percent of Thomson Reuters’ global workforce are based in and around Eagan, Minnesota—a state that was heavily impacted by the immigration crackdown dubbed “Operation Metro Surge.” In January, federal immigration agents shot and killed two legal observers in Minneapolis: 37-year-old mother Renee Good and 37-year-old nurse Alex Pretti.

The Minnesota Star Tribune reported in March that in response to posts on internal message boards expressing concern about Thomson Reuters’ work with ICE, company executives made themselves available for “listening sessions.” Kevin Appold, the company’s vice president for project management and US public records, also published a post titled “Let’s Talk about CLEAR” in the company forum.

ICE renewing its contract with the company comes just weeks after a shareholder resolution demanding a review of the human rights implications of its contracts failed at the Thomson Reuters annual meeting in early June, earning the support of just 3 percent of voting shareholders. Hanley tells WIRED that the company “welcomed the outcome of the vote.” Hanley also pointed WIRED to the company’s Proxy Circular and Shareholder Proposal, and noted that the company had completed its second human rights saliency and impact assessment into its operations and investigative solutions.

“We are confident the risk indicators applied in this assessment are robust and relevant today,” Hanley says. “Therefore, an additional independent assessment would be duplicative and an inefficient use of resources.”

The contract renewal also comes within days of ICE agents shooting and killing two people in unrelated incidents. On Monday, ICE officers in Biddeford, Maine, shot and killed 25-year-old Joan Sebastian Guerrero, a Colombian immigrant and legal US resident. On July 7, ICE agents shot and killed 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican migrant and longtime US resident who had been working to obtain legal status.

Both Guerrero and Salgado Araujo were driving when they first encountered ICE agents, and the agents respectively claimed that they shot the men due to fear for public safety. On Tuesday, administration officials announced that ICE would scale back its number of vehicle stops, but President Donald Trump contradicted this decision in a Wednesday post on Truth Social. It’s unclear how many ICE vehicle stops may be initiated, in part, using data from license-plate-reader data.