US Politics
Trump gives green light for $2m ICE deal with notorious Israeli spyware company
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The Trump administration appears to have unfrozen a stalled $2 million Biden-era contract with Paragon Solutions (US) Inc., a spyware company founded in Israel whose products have been accused of facilitating the surveillance of journalists and activists.
On Saturday, a public procurement database showed that a stop work order on the September 2024 deal with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had been lifted, technology journalist Jack Poulson reported on his All-Source Intelligence Substack.
The deal does not specify what ICE will be getting as part of the deal, beyond describing an agreement for a “fully configured proprietary solution including license, hardware, warranty, maintenance, and training.”
An individual who answered a phone number listed for Paragon on the contract declined to comment.
The Independent has contacted ICE for comment.
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The initial deal was paused in October to review whether it complied with a March 2023 Biden administration executive order limiting the use of commercial spyware that could pose counterintelligence risks to the U.S. or that might be improperly used by a foreign government, WIRED reported.
Critics warned of potential risks from the U.S. engaging with Paragon, whose Graphite program can quietly invade the mobile phone of its target and extract its contents, primarily through accessing cloud backup data.
“Invasive, secret hacking power is corrupting,” John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, which has probed the foreign use of Paragon products, told The Guardian. “That’s why there’s a growing pile of spyware scandals in democracies, including with Paragon’s Graphite.”
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency has previously used Graphite against drug traffickers outside the U.S., The New York Times reported in 2022.
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Paragon was founded by Ehud Schneorson, a former commander of Israel’s cyber-spying Unit 8200. In late 2024, AE Industrial Partners, a Florida-based investment group, acquired the company for $500 million, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.
Paragon bills itself as an ethical cyber firm that only sells to the U.S. and other allied countries.
WhatsApp said in early 2025 it had disrupted a hacking campaign targeting about 90 people linked to Paragon, and an Italian journalist and several pro-immigration activists said they were among the victims. Analysis by the Citizen Lab think tank suggests two other journalists were targeted.
Paragon said in June it terminated contracts in Italy after claiming the Italian government refused its help in investigating whether its products were improperly used in the attack.
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“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,” Paragon said in a statement at the time. “As the Italian authorities chose not to proceed with this solution, Paragon terminated its contracts in Italy.”
The Trump administration has pursued other aggressive intelligence methods as part of its immigration-related operations, including social media surveillance for “anti-American” activity and combing through massive amounts of usually walled-off government housing data to find migrants.
