Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to renew and expand a contract with Thomson Reuters Special Services, a subsidiary of Thomson Reuters, for data tools that the agency says it needs to identify unaccompanied minors and investigate fraud, according to a federal contracting notice published Tuesday.
The proposed deal would pay as much as $25 million a year for up to five years. That is a sharp jump from the comparable prior contract, which federal spending records list at $24 million total across five years. ICE has bought data from Thomson Reuters since 2008, but the new justification points to a broader role for the company’s systems inside the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement program.
The Department of Homeland Security says in the notice that Thomson Reuters Special Services is the only vendor able to provide continuous monitoring of as many as 1 million people and organizations, with event-based alerts and risk scoring. The filing does not say what events trigger alerts, how the risk models score people, or what safeguards apply when government agents act on those outputs. Useful omission, if you are selling a black box to the state.
What ICE is buying
The contract would keep ICE connected to several Thomson Reuters databases. The best known is CLEAR, an investigative platform that includes public records and license plate reader data. Thomson Reuters has sourced that plate data from Vigilant Solutions since 2017; Vigilant is now owned by Motorola.
Another named tool, Continuous Alerting Batch Solution, is described by ICE as pulling information about people who were recently jailed or had contact with law enforcement, including alerts tied to last known location data. The package also includes Westlaw court records, Real Time Incarceration and Arrest Records, and Thomson Reuters Special Services Entity Authority, which Thomson Reuters says feeds into its RAPID risk intelligence platform.
The contracting notice says the bundle supports continuous monitoring, court document retrieval, risk assessments, and academic risk flagging. It does not define an academic risk.
The notice says ICE needs ready access to data because of a reprioritized mission tied to a presidential mandate covering voter fraud, immigration fraud, and national security. It also refers to demand for data that can identify unaccompanied minors and people involved in fraud of government funds. The filing does not explain why ICE, rather than the Department of Health and Human Services, would be identifying unaccompanied children.
Children, sponsors and enforcement
Unaccompanied migrant children are usually handled by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, an HHS office that operates separately from immigration enforcement. In February 2025, ICE agents received expanded access to the ORR database used to track those children, according to NPR.
Thomson Reuters spokesperson Kat Hanley told WIRED that the company’s work for ICE may include vetting sponsors of children entering the United States to support their welfare and safety. A government employee familiar with immigration processes told WIRED that DHS agents, including ICE, will use Thomson Reuters databases to run background checks on potential sponsors. The employee spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to talk to the press.
Sponsors are typically parents or adult relatives who provide food, housing, medical care, and help ensure a child appears for immigration appointments and court hearings. Jason Boyd, vice president of federal policy at Kids in Need of Defense, told WIRED that DHS involvement marks a break from the historic ORR-led sponsor screening process. KIND says the average stay for an unaccompanied child in ORR custody was more than 190 days as of spring 2026.
ICE, DHS, and HHS did not respond to WIRED’s requests for comment. A White House spokesperson referred questions to DHS and ICE.
The renewal is also landing inside Thomson Reuters. About 200 employees signed a March letter urging the company not to renew the ICE contract, according to The New York Times. Hanley told WIRED that Thomson Reuters takes employee concerns seriously and has held conversations, listening sessions, intranet updates, and an all-hands meeting about its products. A shareholder proposal seeking a human rights review of company contracts failed in June with 3 percent support, according to Reuters. Hanley said Thomson Reuters welcomed that vote and viewed another independent assessment as duplicative.
This story draws on original reporting from WIRED.
