ICE buys phone location data without warrants again after 2023 ban

The Fourth Amendment requires law enforcement to get a warrant from a judge before conducting a search. But the government has exploited a loophole: the 'third-party doctrine' holds that information voluntarily shared with a third party — like a cell carrier or data broker — loses Fourth Amendment protection. That doctrine is what allows ICE to buy location data without a warrant.

In 2023, the DHS Office of Inspector General found that CBP, ICE, and the Secret Service had violated federal law by purchasing and using commercial location data without warrants. The finding led ICE to stop the practice. By 2025, ICE had issued a new no-bid contract to surveillance company PPenlink and resumed the same practice.

The PPenlink contract covers a product called Webloc, developed by a company called CTCobwebs Technologies. Cobwebs was previously banned by Meta (Facebook) from its platforms after Meta found the company had been targeting activists, journalists, and opposition politicians in multiple countries using data harvested from social media and mobile devices.

Sens. Ron Wyden, Elizabeth Warren, Ed Markey, and Brian Schatz sent a letter to DHS IG Cuffari on March 3, 2026, requesting a new investigation. Their letter cited the contracting records and the prior OIG finding. The senators' ability to get that investigation depends on Cuffari's capacity — the same IG whose access has been blocked in 11 investigations.

Commercial location data is harvested from smartphone apps — weather apps, games, navigation tools — that collect GPS coordinates and sell them to data brokers. Those brokers then aggregate and sell the data to anyone willing to pay, including law enforcement agencies. The data is often precise to within a few meters and can track a person's movements 24/7.

The Supreme Court's 2018 Carpenter v. United States ruling required a warrant for historical cell phone location data held by carriers. But the ruling left open whether the same protection applies to data purchased from commercial brokers — which is precisely the loophole ICE exploited.

ICE's warrantless location data purchases are part of a broader surveillance architecture that includes license plate readers, facial recognition, social media monitoring, and utility records. The combination of tools allows ICE to track an individual's location, identity, movements, and associations without a single judicial warrant.

The no-bid contract to PPenlink was issued in 2025 under a 'urgency' designation. The senators' letter notes that no-bid urgency contracts bypass competitive procurement processes and reduce public scrutiny of what tools the government is acquiring and for what purpose.

Location data purchases don't just affect undocumented immigrants — the data tracks everyone's device. If ICE can buy location data without a warrant, any government agency with appropriations can do the same for any investigative purpose. The surveillance infrastructure built for immigration enforcement is available to all federal law enforcement.

Sen. Wyden has introduced legislation — the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act — that would ban federal agencies from purchasing personal data from brokers to circumvent warrant requirements. The bill has passed the Senate but stalled in conference with the House.