The surveillance architecture required for a Trump-style immigration crackdown in the UK is already embedded across government, MPs and campaigners have warned – all of which would be inherited by an incoming Reform administration that is committed to enacting its own “mass deportation project” should it come to power.
Research by the Nerve has revealed that seven companies connected to ICE – Palantir, Anduril, Cellebrite, Magnet Forensics, Babel Street, Penlink and Zignal Labs – hold or have held UK public sector contracts with the Home Office, Ministry of Defence, police and other departments. All seven also supply the US Department of Homeland Security, whose agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), are carrying out the most brutal US deportation programme in living memory.
Reform has said that it will unfold its own mass deportation project, “Operation Restoring Justice”, to “relentlessly identify and detain all illegal migrants in the UK”. The party has threatened to mimic ICE’s actions under Trump by setting up a “deportation command” to facilitate “the largest-scale mass deportation plan in Britain’s history”, which could see millions removed without due process.
As recently reported by the Telegraph, this would act as a “Big Brother-style nerve centre”, and combine data from the Home Office, police, NHS, DVLA, HMRC and even banks to identify people for removal. The party has also proposed to send all foreign-born prisoners abroad to countries such as El Salvador or Kosovo in order to end the need for early releases, and to build 12,400 temporary prisons on MoD land within 18 months of forming a government – structures that party leader Nigel Farage has dubbed “Nightingale” prisons, named after the Nightingale hospitals of the pandemic era.
After viewing our research, Clive Lewis, the Labour MP for Norwich South, said: “American citizens are constantly telling us to heed the warnings offered by what’s happening across the Atlantic. Reform want to replicate the chilling scenes we see of violent ICE agents operating with impunity against our own citizens. Labour need to take action now to make sure that won’t happen.
“The last government … gleefully laid the groundwork to enable Reform’s plans, playing into their migrant-demonising rhetoric, attacking fundamental rights such as access to jury trials, and rolling out greater surveillance of our citizens. All of these contributed to a situation where an authoritarian, anti-migrant state agency could be allowed to run riot over our civil liberties.”
ICE is America’s best-funded law enforcement agency. It has been spending its enormous budget on a wide array of surveillance tools to spy on and monitor the American populace, as well as to intimidate activists and journalists. Recent research shows that spending on AI and surveillance tools during Donald Trump’s current term doubled from 2024 to 2025, reaching $310m, and in 2026 has soared to a record $513m.
Our research shows that many of the same companies involved in the Trump administration’s ICE actions hold lucrative UK government contracts – including new spending, as of this year, with the Home Office and UK Border Force, as well as with the MoD and the police.
While not an exhaustive list, the seven companies identified by the Nerve are part of a network of providers offering the phone cracking, location detection, facial recognition, spyware, border surveillance and internet monitoring services that underpin ICE’s work.
The growing UK state surveillance network
As previously reported in the Nerve, Palantir has over £670m in current or historical contracts with the UK government, including with the MoD and the police. The company has played a central role in ICE’s operations, and has received $81m in contracts with the agency since January 2025, including a $30m contract to build its “ImmigrationOS”, offering “near real-time visibility” on people self-deporting from the US, and helping ICE agents choose who to deport.
Palantir has also reportedly been in talks with the Home Office to work with the UK’s border service on tackling small boat crossings to the UK, as it further enmeshes itself within the British state. The company has previously signalled it would not stand in the way of Reform’s future plans, should the party win at the next general election. Palantir’s UK lead, Louis Mosley, has stated that the company would execute plans to extract NHS data for immigration enforcement purposes in the event that Farage’s party is given a “clear public mandate” to do so.
The health justice charity Medact has said that Palantir's already extensive access to UK infrastructure and the “highly interoperable nature” of its software could enable “data-driven state abuses of power” in the future. Palantir said they had “no intention or means of using data in this way” and that to do so “would be illegal”.
Speaking to the Nerve, Clive Lewis called on Andy Burnham to trigger the break clause in Palantir’s NHS Federated Data Platform contract, and to review every other contract held with companies working with ICE. “Allowing companies such as Palantir to remain within our public services means that a future far-right government’s plans for an ICE-style agency will be much more doable,” he said.
But Palantir is far from the only firm working with British authorities that is linked to theTrump administration’s “paramilitary”-style crackdown on immigration.
Together, Palantir’s and Babel Street’s tools have the ability to enable near-constant mass monitoring, surveillance, and assessments of people from their behaviour online
Official documentation viewed by Amnesty International has previously identified that AI tools used by the US DHS include not only Palantir’s “ImmigrationOS”, but another tool, “Babel X”, supplied by intelligence analytics company Babel Street. Together the tools have the ability to enable near-constant mass monitoring, surveillance, and assessments of people from their behaviour online – posing a threat not only to refugees and asylum seekers, but also, for example, to pro-Palestinian student protesters.
Government spending records indicate that the UK Home Office has spent at least £4.14m on technology supplied by Babel Street Rosette Ltd, including £1.2m between 2024 and 2025 alone.
Another firm, Anduril, which is backed by Palantir’s Peter Thiel and staffed by former Palantir employees, is used by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to build AI-powered surveillance systems, autonomous border towers, drones and sensors to monitor the US’s “smart” border wall and detect migrants crossing into the country.
In the UK, Anduril has secured multimillion-pound contracts from the MoD to provide drone equipment and sensor tower technology for military bases, and was awarded a separate £21m contract with the Home Office’s Border Force between 2022 and June 2026 to provide a “common operating picture and command interface”, which includes building AI-powered sentry towers on the south-east coast of England.
These towers, according to a freedom of information (FOI) response, provide “persistent autonomous awareness across land, sea and air” and are capable of tracking subjects considered to be of interest via thermal and electro-optical imaging sensors, and radar designed to detect small boat arrivals and waterborne objects within a nine-mile radius. They use the same Anduril “Lattice OS” system as deployed by the MoD.
In September 2025, ICE’s law enforcement arm, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), signed a $3m contract with Magnet Forensics, which makes phone cracking software known as “Graykey”, allowing agents to connect to a locked phone and access data held within it. Scrutiny of public records indicates that Magnet’s products, including Graykey, are also actively used in this country, primarily by the police.
‘Now is the time for vigilance against threats to our democratic institutions – if it can happen over there, it could happen here’
Forces in Nottinghamshire, Cheshire, Yorkshire, Northumbria, Lancashire, and the British Transport Police have all purchased products from Magnet. The agreements date back as far as 2019, but many have been signed more recently, with some contracts running through to 2026
Home Office spending records indicate that as recently as January-March 2026, its Science, Technology, Analysis and Research department had spent £147,631 on software from Magnet Forensics. Total known public sector spending on their software currently exceeds £1.3m.
ICE also has a relationship with digital forensics firm Cellebrite, which also makes software for cracking and extracting data from mobile devices. The Israeli-based company has been supplying tech to ICE since at least 2008, and its software has been used by Israeli forces to harvest phone data from Palestinian detainees since 2023 during Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.
Research shows it also has a longstanding relationship with public bodies in the UK. Cellebrite’s software has been purchased by the Home Office, the Serious Fraud Office, DWP, and at least nine police forces, including a £5.4m contract with the Metropolitan police. Total public spending with them currently exceeds £9.1m. The company was reportedly paid £45,000 by the Home Office’s Immigration Enforcement authority in May 2018.
Information obtained under FOI reveals that the MoD, in addition to purchasing Cellebrite’s technology through third-party providers, has also contracted directly with the company in a £29,500 deal “to look at seized digital devices and forensically examine them in criminal cases for the Ministry of Defence police”.
A Cellebrite spokesperson said that the company’s software was “designed to lawfully access, extract, analyse and share data for authorised investigations”. It said that it did not “discuss specifics” about its customers.
Martin Wrigley, the Liberal Democrat MP for Newton Abbot in Devon, told the Nerve that these companies, and the software they produce, “should not be something that is given free rein”. While not every tool at the disposal of ICE is inherently problematic, he said, “[these] are tools, they are sophisticated spanners, and a spanner can be used absolutely perfectly for taking apart a motorbike. But when you hit somebody over the head with it, it becomes a lethal weapon.” Commenting on Reform’s deportation plans, he said: “Reform are just in a fantasy world. The idea of creating prison camps all over the country and detaining 1000s upon 1000s of people who are here is just fantasy, and it's trying to blame people whose fault it isn't about failures in the system.”
Another ICE spending priority has been advanced social media monitoring systems, including multimillion-dollar contracts with companies such as Penlink and Zignal Labs. The latter platform claims to be able to ingest more than 8bn posts a day, and allows government agencies to monitor not only the actions of migrants, but also dissenters that oppose ICE’s actions.
Information obtained through FOI disclosures reveals that the UK Ministry of Defence has also engaged with Zignal Labs, spending nearly £635,000 on a single contract with the supplier that ran between October 2022 and July 2025. The licence agreement was to supply “open source intelligence” services, but no further information was given.
Home Office records show that in February of this year, UK Border Force also spent £250,666 buying software from Penlink. When asked for comment, the Home Office said it was longstanding policy not to comment on commercial matters.
A Penlink spokesperson told the Nerve that it had worked for public safety agencies for “nearly 40 years”, and that “through lawful and responsible use, our technology helps public safety agencies turn this data into actionable intelligence that supports investigations, protects communities, and helps bring justice to victims and their families”.
In the UK, civil society organisations have warned the parliamentary committee on human rights that the UK’s current “deregulatory” approach to AI governance and fragmented regulatory framework fails to adequately protect human rights, and have raised concerns about the use of the technology by law enforcement and public bodies such as the Department for Work and Pensions without specific governing legislation.
The Home Office has also recently been granted new powers to seize phones from migrants without arresting them, and use technology it has to download intelligence from their devices.
Labour’s immigration hardline
Under Shabana Mahmood’s Home Office, immigration enforcement raids, as of January this year, have reached the highest levels ever recorded. Labour’s immigration bill, which is backed by new prime minister Andy Burnham and had its second parliamentary reading in July, will make it easier for the government to deport asylum-seekers, and reshape the appeals process via a new Independent Immigration Appeals Authority to speed up removals. Critics argue this could undermine judicial independence and the rule of law, and remove the legal protections of some long-term commonwealth citizens.
Sile Reynolds, head of asylum advocacy at the charity Freedom from Torture, told the Nerve: "The latest proposals by the current government – including reforms that will deny refugees a fair hearing, weaken scrutiny of asylum decisions, increase the detention of vulnerable people and deny refugees the security they need to rebuild their lives – demonstrate the influence of far-right talking points on mainstream politics.”
The group stressed the point that “the further this government goes in building the infrastructure of deterrence and brutal enforcement, the easier it will be for any future government to destroy what is left of the UK’s proud legacy of refugee protection.”
According to Lewis, the path to an even more aggressively anti-migrant and authoritarian state would almost certainly be enabled by tech firms with questionable approaches to human rights. “Many of these firms are already embedded in our public institutions,” he said. “Now is the time for vigilance against threats to our democratic institutions – if it can happen over there, it could happen here.
“With an ascendant far right, we should be building a firewall for our democracy, not creating the bridge for their authoritarian plans. Democracies don’t decay overnight – it happens piece by piece.”
A Palantir spokesperson said: “The use of Palantir’s software by the United States Immigration Custom and Enforcement is longstanding – it dates back to the Obama administration and has been used by administrations of both stripes since then. We do not believe it is right for unelected tech companies to choose between the policies of different democratically elected administrations. What is critical is that the software used to process data is entirely under the control of the customer.”
Reform UK, Anduril, Babel Street, Zignal Labs and Magnet Forensics did not respond to requests for comment.
The Ice Crackdown
Over 400,000 people have been booked into ICE detention centres during Trump’s second term.
145,000 children have been separated from their parents since the unprecedented surge in ICE activity.
More than 43,000 people were booked into ICE detention centres in June this year, with arrests numbering in excess of 1,400 a day.
As of July this year, there were nearly 68,000 people being held in detention centres across the US, where they have faced physical abuse, inhumane treatment and lack of due process. The number detained at any given time hovers between 65,000 and 73,000.
52 people died in ICE custody during the first 500 days of Trump’s second presidency.
Immigration agents have shot at people on at least 23 occasions, with some publications citing a higher number of incidents.
There have been another 49 incidents in which agents “have held bystanders, protesters, or other people at gunpoint under questionable circumstances”.
At least 10 people have been fatally shot by ICE agents during Trump’s second term including American citizens Alex Pretti, Renee Nicole Good, and Ruben Ray Martinez.
A recent report in Time magazine has identified “418 times agents shoved, tackled, or pinned people; 76 times they pulled people from cars; 130 times they brandished weapons and 69 times they verbally threatened to use weapons or force; 361 times they pepper-sprayed or used other chemical irritants on people; and 81 times they used tactics so dangerous that they’re sharply prohibited by many law enforcement agencies because they’re deadly, such as chokeholds and grabbing people by the neck.”