ICE to Pay Thomson Reuters $125 Million for Voter-Fraud Data Access

The Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) plans to pay $25 million per year for five years, totaling $125 million, to Thomson Reuters Special Services (TR SS) for continuous access to the company’s CLEAR database. CLEAR aggregates personal information—including names, addresses, Social Security numbers, ethnicity, social-media posts, geolocation, license-plate data and property records—to enable “continuous monitoring and alert service for millions of individuals and entities of interest,” according to procurement documents. ICE describes the data as essential for “identification of Voters Fraud, Immigration Fraud and National Security” and for verifying school, benefit, immigration and other eligibility requirements.

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Thomson Reuters told 404 Media that linking CLEAR to ICE’s deportation activities is inaccurate. The company asserts it “prohibits the use of CLEAR for the purpose of identifying and locating non-criminal immigrants or undocumented individuals with the intention of deportation solely on the basis of the individual’s immigration status” and that “immigration status is not a search field in CLEAR.” It added that CLEAR is intended for investigations into “child exploitation, human trafficking, narcotics and weapons trafficking, and fraud/financial crime.”

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Emma Pullman, head of shareholder engagement for the B.C. General Employees’ Union, noted that Thomson Reuters has given “inconsistent and shifting accounts” of its ICE contracts and that the current agreement is the first she is aware of to explicitly include voter-fraud investigations. Pullman said shareholders and employees will press the company for clarity. Additionally, a former Thomson Reuters employee was terminated after speaking out about the firm’s data sales to ICE, highlighting internal dissent.

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

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• “The importance of TRSS owning the proprietary data makes it essential for quality control to ICE.” — Procurement document

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• “We prohibit the use of CLEAR for the purpose of identifying and locating noncriminal immigrants or undocumented individuals with the intention of deportation solely on the basis of the individual’s immigration status. We take this restriction seriously, and we enforce it.” — Thomson Reuters statement

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• “TRSS is the only contractor able to provide ICE with a continuous monitoring and alert service for millions of individuals and entities of interest, this is essential for national security purposes.” — Procurement document

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Thomson Reuters claims it does not allow CLEAR to be used for immigration-status searches, yet procurement documents explicitly cite “immigration fraud” and “identification of unaccompanied minors” as contract objectives. The extent to which ICE will employ CLEAR for voter-fraud investigations versus other law-enforcement purposes remains unclear.

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