--- title: "Massachusetts sells ICE the tools of its crackdown: iris scanners, armored trucks, robot dogs" description: "A no-bid deal in Plymouth, BearCats from Pittsfield, Cerberus from Waltham: the state’s firms are cashing in on the immigration crackdown" author: "Jan Sokol" published: 2026-10-27T21:15:01.711Z modified: 2026-10-28T07:36:27Z url: https://rews.cc/a/massachusetts-sells-ice-the-tools-of-its-crackdown-iris-scan-3d63bc language: en tags: ["ice", "immigration", "ai", "surveillance", "boston-dynamics", "us"] publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)" --- # Massachusetts sells ICE the tools of its crackdown: iris scanners, armored trucks, robot dogs *A no-bid deal in Plymouth, BearCats from Pittsfield, Cerberus from Waltham: the state’s firms are cashing in on the immigration crackdown* By Jan Sokol · October 27, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/massachusetts-sells-ice-the-tools-of-its-crackdown-iris-scan-3d63bc ## In brief - Plymouth-based BI2 Technologies holds the largest ICE contract in Massachusetts, a no-bid $25 million deal for iris and face scanning - BI2 hired lobbying firm Ballard Partners and spent $330,000 promoting its technology to DHS and Capitol Hill - Pittsfield’s Lenco Industries has won four ICE contracts worth about $5.2 million in Trump’s second term - Hundreds of Boston Dynamics workers petitioned to end a $1.3 million deal that put four modified robot dogs with ICE - CSI Aviation has received $1.3 billion from ICE since 2025; Gov. Healey has pressed Signature Aviation over Hanscom flights Read through USASpending, the federal ledger, and the campaign against immigrants stops looking like a raid. It looks like invoices. A phone app from Plymouth. A steel truck from Pittsfield. Office landlines from Quincy. Four robot dogs from Waltham. Reporters Yogev Toby and Scooty Nickerson [traced in the *Boston Globe*](https://bostonglobe.com/2026/10/27/business/ice-contracts-massachusetts-businesses-profit/) how Massachusetts companies have taken their places in the queue of vendors to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency now spending billions. ## The eye The biggest of these deals in the state belongs to BI2 Technologies of Plymouth: $25 million, signed in May, five times what its previous ICE contract was worth. It pays for a mobile phone app that lets agents scan a person’s eyes and identify them with facial recognition. It also opens up a database of 5 million booking records and a searchable set of driver licenses and license plates. The award posted to the federal procurement system was [dated May 22 and worth $25.1 million](https://www.biometricupdate.com/202605/ice-expands-field-biometric-identification-with-25m-iris-recognition-contract), and it covers 1,570 handheld devices that read irises, fingerprints and faces. The earlier deal, according to [ID Tech](https://idtechwire.com/ice-awards-25-1m-no-bid-iris-scanning-contract-to-bi2-technologies/), was $4.6 million in September 2025 for 200 devices. [The Register reported](https://www.theregister.com/public-sector/2026/05/29/ice-awards-bi2-25m-contract-for-1570-biometric-scanners/5248733) on the scale of the order when it was awarded. Until recently BI2 had worked mostly for local police and sheriffs. During Donald Trump’s first term it gave iris scanners to sheriff’s departments in 31 counties along the US-Mexico border. After Trump returned to office it hired Ballard Partners, a lobbying firm whose founder, Brian Ballard, is involved with the president’s inner circle. The company spent $330,000 promoting its technology to the Department of Homeland Security and to people with influence on Capitol Hill. Then came the contract, with no competitive bidding. ICE’s procurement documents say its needs could be met only by “proprietary solutions offered exclusively by BI2 Technologies.” BI2’s executives did not answer questions about how they won the work. Ballard did not respond either. The order of events is an old one: give something away, hire someone who knows the court, and wait for the request to be written in your shape. Jessica Tillipman, associate dean for Government Procurement Law Studies at George Washington University, has been tracking ICE’s spending. She has seen a spike in no-bid contracts at DHS. They are not proof of wrongdoing, she said, but they raise questions about transparency in a process that was once meant to stay out of politics. The requirements, she said, are drawn “so narrow that only one company can actually meet their criteria or perform it.” A DHS spokesperson said contract decisions are reviewed so that ICE’s technology is “consistent with all applicable law enforcement policies and standards.” The spokesperson would not say how the iris scanners are being used. In general, the statement said, the agency’s technology helps “in the arrest of criminal gang members, child sex offenders, murderers, drug dealers, identity thieves and more, all while respecting civil liberties and privacy interests.” ## The truck Lenco Industries of Pittsfield builds the BearCat, a steel-plated truck with ballistic glass rated against assault-rifle fire and grenades. It first sold one to DHS in 2008. In Trump’s second term it has won four ICE contracts worth roughly $5.2 million, among them a $400,000 vehicle for a special response team in Kansas City. Last September ICE announced it intended to buy BearCats from a single source in a deal valued at $8.3 million. In the end it bought 20 armored vehicles from a Canadian company. The trucks now appear in ICE’s own promotional material: federal agents riding on top, one holding an automatic weapon. Lenco would not say how many it had sold or where they are deployed. DHS also declined to comment. ## The telephone Some vendors keep quiet about it. Granite Telecommunications of Quincy, whose billionaire owner Hale usually makes headlines for philanthropy, holds the state’s third-largest ICE contract, worth $9 million. It was signed in 2022, under President Joe Biden, and runs until July 2027. It covers ordinary things: landline phones and alarm systems in federal office buildings. It sits within a large, heavily regulated program called Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions, and Granite holds more than 400 contracts under it. Granite declined to comment. Clark Warner, who studies organizational ethics at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, said the companies “are still attempting to maximize shareholder profit.” He added: “It doesn’t occur to them that their profit could be damaged by a backlash because they are working with a highly politicized agency. Maybe they should.” ## The dog Boston Dynamics of Waltham is not on the list of top ICE vendors, but immigration agents have four of its dog-like robots. They came through a $1.3 million deal in which Radeco, a Connecticut firm, fitted them with military-grade equipment: a robotic arm, a thermal camera, sensors for explosives. Radeco’s version is called Cerberus, after the three-headed dog of myth that guards the gates of hell. A company spokesperson said the robot exists to keep people safe, and that DHS is bound by terms that forbid weaponizing it or using it to harm or intimidate. Hundreds of the company’s employees wrote to executives in September asking them to end the deal. “We cannot be proud of working at BD when that work is being used by a government agency that brutalizes civilians,” their petition said. The company replied that nearly half the signatures were anonymous and that the protesters are a minority of its roughly 1,500 workers. It has held ethics discussions. Then-interim chief executive Amanda McMaster wrote to staff asking them to “respect and accept this decision, even if you do not agree with it.” That revolt [inside the company](https://rews.cc/a/boston-dynamics-employees-petition-to-block-robot-dog-sale-t-891639) has spread past its walls. Barbara Katzenberg, 76, and the De-ICE Action Network Now have held rallies outside the headquarters, where dozens of people, some wearing dog masks, carried signs. She called the company “naive” for believing ICE will keep to ethical principles. Last July a De-ICE campaign helped persuade Citizens Bank, based in Rhode Island, to scale back its dealings with private prison companies that contract with ICE. ## The runway The national figures are bigger. CSI Aviation, a Texas air-charter broker that arranges ICE’s deportation flights, including flights out of Hanscom Field in Massachusetts, has received $1.3 billion in obligated funds from the agency since 2025. In March Governor Maura Healey wrote to Tony Lefebvre, chief executive of Signature Aviation, the flight-services company at Hanscom: “You have a choice to either continue profiting from ICE’s unlawful tactics that are depriving people of due process and separating parents from their children, or you can stand with the people and communities you say that you serve.” Her [office’s announcement](https://www.mass.gov/news/governor-healey-calls-on-signature-aviation-to-stop-supporting-ice-deportation-flights-out-of-hanscom-field-airport) asked the company to stop fueling the planes, coordinating with charter operators and giving access to the airfield. [The letter itself](https://www.mass.gov/doc/signature-letter/download) is dated March 6. Signature has said federal law obliges it to serve government flights. “Simply put, we have no ability to restrict flight operations that comply with the law and relevant regulations,” it told [the *Dallas Morning News*](https://www.dallasnews.com/news/immigration/article/ice-flights-dallas-love-field-22361884.php). The governor has not written letters like that to the companies in her own state. Her spokesperson declined to comment. Charles Tiefer, professor emeritus at the University of Baltimore Law School, spent years investigating wartime contracting in Afghanistan and Iraq as a government-appointed commissioner. He sees the same windfall now. “DHS has such a surplus of money and no accountability for it,” he said. “It’s just eager to spend.”