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Democratic Lawmakers Demand Probe Into DHS Warrantless Location Tracking
“Location data is extremely sensitive, and can reveal someone’s religion, their political views, medical conditions, addictions, and with whom they spend time."
Mar 03, 2026
Over 70 Democratic US lawmakers on Tuesday demanded a new investigation into warrantless purchases of Americans' location data by Department of Homeland Security agencies—including Immigration and Customs Enforcement—which critics say violate the Fourth Amendment prohibition of unwarranted search and seizure.
In a letter to DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari, 72 congressional Democrats led by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY) wrote, "Public contracting documents indicate that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) recently resumed buying Americans’ location data from a shady data broker" after the agency "ended a previous program to purchase Americans’ cellphone location data in 2023, following an investigation by your office and scrutiny from Congress."
"Location data is extremely sensitive, and can reveal someone’s religion, their political views, medical conditions, addictions, and with whom they spend time," the lawmakers' letter states. "It is for that reason that ordinarily, the government must obtain a warrant from a judge in order to demand such data from phone or technology companies."
While the Fourth Amendment generally prohibits the government from searching or obtaining Americans' private information without a warrant, federal agencies have circumvented the proscription by buying sensitive personal data from private brokers.
"Public reports indicate that ICE has resumed its location data purchases, even though DHS has yet to adopt all of the recommendations from your prior review," the lawmakers noted in their letter.
The letter continues:
ICE issued a no-bid contract to the surveillance company PenLink in 2025, which included licenses for its location tracking product, Webloc, according to press reports. Webloc was developed by the controversial surveillance company Cobwebs Technologies, which was combined with Nebraska-based PenLink as part of a $200 million private equity deal in 2023. Cobwebs gained notoriety when Meta banned the company in 2021, as part of a crackdown on surveillance mercenaries after detecting the company’s customers targeting activists, opposition politicians, and government officials in Hong Kong and Mexico.
ICE is now stonewalling congressional oversight into its purchase of location data. Sen. Wyden’s office requested a briefing from ICE soon after this contract was revealed in the press, in October, which was scheduled in December, for February 10, 2026. One day before that briefing was to take place, ICE canceled it with no explanation and without any offer to reschedule.
"Given DHS’ failure to adopt a policy for the use of commercial data, coupled with ICE awarding a no-bid contract to a shady data broker that is likely violating federal law, we urge you to open another investigation into the purchase," the lawmakers wrote.
The letter asks:
- Whether ICE and other DHS components are purchasing illegally obtained location data about Americans;
- If so, why does DHS not have policies in place to prevent taxpayer dollars from going to contractors that have invaded Americans’ privacy in violation of federal law;
- How ICE and other DHS components have used location data and whether they have used it to investigate Americans for engaging in constitutionally protected activities, including protesting or monitoring ICE operations;
- Whether ICE and other DHS components are auditing employee access to commercial location data to identify likely patterns of abuse; and
- Why has DHS still not adopted a policy for the use of commercial location data, as you recommended in 2023?
As the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recently explained, ICE has spent $5 million on Webloc and Tangles, another location and social media surveillance product made by PenLink.
According to EFF:
Webloc gathers the locations of millions of phones by gathering data from mobile data brokers and linking it together with other information about users. Tangles is a social media surveillance tool which combines web scraping with access to social media application programming interfaces. These tools are able to build a dossier on anyone who has a public social media account. Tangles is able to link together a person’s posting history, posts, and comments containing keywords, location history, tags, social graph, and photos with those of their friends and family. PenLink then sells this information to law enforcement, allowing law enforcement to avoid the need for a warrant. This means ICE can look up historic and current locations of many people all across the US without ever having to get a warrant.
There have been several attempts to solidify restrictions on government purchase of Americans' personal data in recent years, most notably the Fourth Amendment Is Not for Sale Act (FANFSA), which failed to pass.
Last month, Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) introduced the Security and Freedom Enhancement Act, which would reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act but is also intended to protect Americans from warrantless spying, including by closing the data broker loophole that lets law enforcement buy their way around the Fourth Amendment.
Also last month, Rep. Shontel Brown (D-Ohio) led 13 Democratic lawmakers who sent a separate letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem seeking answers about ICE's use of PenLink surveillance technology "designed to collect and analyze cellphone location data across entire neighborhoods."
"Mass surveillance of entire communities or city blocks raises serious questions about data privacy and potential violations of civil liberties," Brown wrote.
"Americans should be able to trust their government to uphold the Constitution and respect fundamental rights," she added. "Instead, DHS appears to be engaging in broad surveillance practices to monitor entire communities, violating Americans’ fundamental civil rights and civil liberties to punish dissent and advance the president's cruel and unconstitutional mass deportation agenda."
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Wyden Presses DEA for Answers About Drug-Trafficking Probe Targeting Epstein and 14 Associates
"I’m convinced there’s a mess of financial crimes running throughout the Epstein story, and a lot of other people who were directly involved are still walking free," said the senator.
Feb 27, 2026
US Sen. Ron Wyden has given the Drug Enforcement Administration two weeks to provide key information on a secretive, long-running investigation into potential drug trafficking and money laundering by the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and 14 co-conspirators.
The Oregon Democrat wrote to DEA Administrator Terrance Cole asking for a fully unredacted version of a 69-page memo from 2015 that was prepared by the director of the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF) Fusion Center, a specialized Department of Justice (DOJ) unit that President Donald Trump shut down last year.
A heavily redacted version of the memo was included in the Epstein files that were released last month and referred to an OCDETF probe nicknamed "Chain Reaction."
The investigation had been opened in 2010, according to the document, and was still active at the time the memo was drafted. Epstein's 14 co-conspirators, all of whom had their names blacked out in the file release, were being investigated for "illegitimate wire transfers which are tied to illicit drug and/or prostitution activities occurring in the US Virgin Islands and New York City."
The Epstein Files Transparency Act, which required the release of files related to Epstein's sex trafficking operation, requires that redactions are used to protect the identities of victims, "not members of a criminal sex trafficking organization," Wyden wrote in his letter.
“The fact that Epstein was under investigation by [OCDETF] suggests that there was ample evidence indicating that Epstein was engaged in heavy drug trafficking and prostitution as part of cross-border criminal conspiracy. This is incredibly disturbing and raises serious questions as to how this investigation by the DEA was handled,” Wyden wrote.
“Since Epstein and his 14 co-conspirators were never charged by the DOJ for drug trafficking or financial crimes, I am concerned that the DEA and DOJ during the first Trump administration moved to terminate this investigation in order to protect pedophiles," he continued. "I am also concerned that the excessive redactions of this memorandum for operation ‘Chain Reaction’ go well beyond the intent of the Epstein Files Transparency Act."
In a statement on social media Friday, the senator said the Senate Finance Committee, of which he is the ranking member, needs "to know the results" of the OCDETF's investigation.
"Did it result in any charges being brought against the targets? Why did it end, and when? Did the first Trump administration squash it?" he asked.
This document is proof that it’s essential to keep following the money. I’m convinced there’s a mess of financial crimes running throughout the Epstein story, and a lot of other people who were directly involved are still walking free. That’s unacceptable.
— Senator Ron Wyden (@wyden.senate.gov) February 27, 2026 at 10:15 AM
"This is a big one," Wyden said of the redacted memo.
Wyden has led efforts to get to the bottom of financial secrets regarding Epstein's sex trafficking and other criminal operations. Last summer he drew attention to Suspicious Activity Reports that were filed with the US Department of the Treasury, including information on more than 4,725 wire transfers involving Epstein's bank accounts, totaling $1.5 billion in value.
The redacted memo in the Epstein files, he said, "is proof that it’s essential to keep following the money."
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Senate GOP Kills Bill That Would've Reversed $10 Billion Trump Corporate Tax Break
Sen. Ron Wyden called the tax giveaway "indefensible at a time when so many Americans are getting battered by inflation and barely staying afloat."
Feb 10, 2026
Nearly all US Senate Republicans on Tuesday voted to block a resolution that would have reversed a Trump administration regulatory change set to give some of the country's richest companies a $10.3 billion tax break.
The Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution was spearheaded by Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Angus King (I-Maine). The vote on whether to advance it was 47-51. The only Republican to vote in favor was the other Mainer, Susan Collins, who just confirmed she is running for another term, despite two strong Democratic challengers.
In a statement after the vote, Wyden tied the target of his resolution—an Internal Revenue Service guidance undermining the corporate alternative minimum tax (CAMT)—to the sweeping budget package that GOP lawmakers passed and President Donald Trump signed last summer, which also featured significant tax breaks for the rich.
"The ink is barely dry on the megabill Trump and Republicans passed to give $1 trillion in new tax breaks to giant corporations, and now his Treasury Department is throwing another $10 billion handout to the most profitable corporations in America," Wyden said.
"The pattern we're seeing is that the Trump administration gives big corporations and ultrawealthy donors whatever tax benefits they want the second they walk through the door at the Treasury Department, but that doesn't mean the Senate has to allow this giveaway to happen," he stressed. "Stuffing $10 billion into the coffers of corporations that are already raking in enormous profits is indefensible at a time when so many Americans are getting battered by inflation and barely staying afloat."
King similarly declared that "it's downright unfair to give billions in tax relief to America's most successful corporations when Maine people are struggling to afford their prescription drugs, childcare, and groceries." He described their resolution as "a commonsense step toward a fairer tax policy that prioritizes people over profits and levels the playing field."
Although the defeat was predictable, economic justice advocates lambasted Senate Republicans for killing the resolution.
Americans for Tax Fairness executive director David Kass said in a statement that "after passing historic tax giveaways for billionaires and big business through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBA), blowing up the deficit, and cutting billions from critical healthcare and nutrition programs to pay for it, Trump and his GOP allies in the Senate are taking every opportunity to ensure economic elites can avoid paying their fair share."
"This guidance would effectively circumvent Congress and create numerous opportunities for corporate tax evasion while increasing the deficit and national debt, thus creating more imbalance in a tax code that already favors the wealthy and large corporations," Kass said. "Sen. Wyden is right to lead the charge to stop this guidance—average Americans should not be forced to subsidize some of the most profitable companies on Earth."
Like the Senate, the House of Representatives is also narrowly controlled by the GOP. Matt Gardner, a senior fellow at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, noted in a Tuesday blog post that "even if lawmakers of both parties had sufficient backbone to retake the legislative power that the executive branch has usurped, President Trump would veto such a bill."
"But as a matter of educating lawmakers and the public, the recently rejected measure was a success given that tax legislation (such as this resolution) up for a vote in Congress usually gets an official budget score from Congress' revenue estimators at the Joint Committee on Taxation," he wrote. "And in this case, that reveals that this unilateral corporate tax cut from the Trump administration will cost $10 billion over a decade unless it is reversed."
"The Senate's failure to ratify Wyden's resolution may be only the opening salvo for members of Congress who want to retake the power given them under the Constitution to make tax law," Gardner suggested. "The regulation in question is not the first, and surely not the last, attempt by President Trump to unilaterally cut corporate taxes."
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