On July 9, 404 Media obtained Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) documents which reveal that the law enforcement body has gained access to a database called ISO ClaimSearch, which contains 1.8 billion insurance claims, 58 million medical bills, and associated addresses, tax identification numbers, and license plates.
Although Verisk, the company that owns ClaimSearch, a company that detects car and health insurance fraud, has denied ICE or the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are among its clients, it is possible that ICE gained access to the database via an intermediary government agency.
Though some police departments have claimed that ICE’s use of license plate reading cameras was meant to contribute to ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations branch, which investigates smuggling and organized crime, the data was actually going to the Enforcement and Removal Operations, which handles “the detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants.”
ICE’s capabilities to gather and process data have increased substantially. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed by Trump on July 4, provides immigration enforcement with $170 billion, and will make ICE the largest enforcement agency in American history.
ICE not only has the resources, but the experience as well. At the beginning of the Biden administration, it tapped into a private utility database which had hundreds of millions of documents to pursue immigration violations.
After a Trump executive order to remove “information silos” between federal agencies and other actions, ICE’s ability to also proliferate this private information across the entire federal government has become unchecked.
