U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is once again moving forward with a $2 million contract for one of the world’s most advanced spyware tools, following a decision by the Trump administration to lift a Biden-era block on the deal. The contract, originally signed in late 2024 under President Biden, was paused in October of that year to review compliance with a March 2023 executive order that restricted government use of commercial spyware. But on Saturday, August 30, 2025, public procurement databases showed that the stop-work order had been lifted, allowing ICE to proceed with the agreement. The news was first reported by technology journalist Jack Poulson on his All-Source Intelligence Substack.
At the heart of the controversy is Paragon Solutions (US) Inc., a company founded in Israel and now owned by Florida-based AE Industrial Partners, which acquired it for $500 million in late 2024, according to Haaretz. Paragon’s flagship spyware, known as Graphite, is capable of covertly hacking into mobile phones, bypassing encryption, and extracting the contents of devices—including cloud backups. The software can also monitor apps like WhatsApp and Signal, and even activate a device’s microphone for live surveillance, as reported by The Guardian and WIRED.
The contract’s resumption comes after months of uncertainty. The Biden administration’s executive order had specifically barred the operational use of commercial spyware that poses significant counterintelligence or security risks, or that might be misused by foreign governments. The order was a response to mounting evidence that such spyware, including tools from Paragon and its rival NSO Group, had been used to target journalists, activists, and dissidents worldwide. The Biden administration even placed NSO Group on a Commerce Department blacklist for knowingly supplying foreign governments with spyware to "maliciously target" civil society figures.
Paragon Solutions, for its part, has repeatedly tried to distance itself from NSO Group’s reputation. The company insists it only sells its products to the U.S. and allied democracies, and claims to have a strict no-tolerance policy for misuse against journalists or civil society members. In a June 2025 statement, Paragon said, “The company offered both the Italian government and parliament a way to determine whether its system had been used against the journalist in violation of Italian law and the contractual terms. As the Italian authorities chose not to proceed with this solution, Paragon terminated its contracts in Italy.”
Despite these assurances, Paragon has faced its own scandals. WhatsApp reported in early 2025 that it had disrupted a hacking campaign targeting about 90 people linked to Paragon, including journalists and activists. An Italian journalist and several pro-immigration advocates said they were among those targeted, and analysis by the Citizen Lab think tank suggested two other journalists had also been attacked. Paragon ended its contracts in Italy after the government refused to cooperate in investigating the alleged misuse.
Concerns over the deployment of such powerful surveillance tools by ICE are not new. The agency has previously used Graphite spyware outside the U.S. in operations against drug traffickers, according to The New York Times. But civil and human rights groups have repeatedly accused ICE of violating due process rights, and the expansion of its surveillance capabilities has only heightened those fears. Nadine Farid Johnson, policy director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, warned, “Spyware like Paragon’s Graphite poses a profound threat to free speech and privacy. It has already been used against journalists, human rights advocates and political dissidents around the world. The quiet lifting of the stop work order also raises the troubling prospect that parts of the executive branch are acting without adherence to the government’s own vetting requirements.”
Experts in digital surveillance are equally alarmed. John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, told The Guardian, “Invasive, secret hacking power is corrupting. That’s why there’s a growing pile of spyware scandals in democracies, including with Paragon’s Graphite.” He went further, arguing that such tools “were designed for dictatorships, not democracies built on liberty and protection of individual rights.” Scott-Railton also highlighted the counterintelligence risks inherent in using commercial spyware, noting, “As long as the same mercenary spyware tech is going to multiple governments, there is a baked-in counterintelligence risk. Since all of them now know what secret surveillance tech the US is using, and would have special insights on how to detect it and track what the US is doing with it. Short of Paragon cancelling all foreign contracts, I’m not sure how this goes away.”
The Trump administration’s decision to reactivate the ICE-Paragon contract is part of a broader pattern of aggressive intelligence gathering in immigration enforcement. Previous initiatives have included social media surveillance for "anti-American" activity and the use of government housing data to track down migrants. Supporters of these measures argue they are necessary to combat crime and terrorism, and Paragon itself maintains that its products are intended to prevent such threats. However, critics counter that the risks to privacy, civil liberties, and free speech are simply too great, especially in the absence of robust oversight.
Neither ICE nor Paragon has commented publicly on the latest contract developments, despite multiple requests from media outlets including The Independent. The procurement documents themselves are vague, describing only a "fully configured proprietary solution including license, hardware, warranty, maintenance, and training." This lack of transparency has only fueled further suspicion among watchdog groups and privacy advocates.
The controversy comes at a time when the U.S. government is grappling with how to balance national security interests with the protection of individual rights in the digital age. The Biden administration’s efforts to establish "guardrails" around spyware use were seen by many as a step in the right direction, but the Trump administration’s willingness to override those restrictions suggests the debate is far from settled. As Johnson of the Knight First Amendment Institute put it, the expansion of ICE’s surveillance powers “compounded civil liberty concerns surrounding the rapid and dramatic expansion of ICE’s budget and authority.”
With the reactivation of the Paragon contract, ICE is now poised to gain access to one of the most potent hacking tools ever created. Whether this move will help keep Americans safe or simply further erode trust in government remains an open—and hotly contested—question.
