Rogue Towers & Silent Signals: ICE’s Use of Fake Cell Towers to Spy, and What It Means for Privacy

By: Mary Campbell

In an era where smartphones have become indispensable extensions of our daily lives, the revelation that government agencies can secretly transform them into tracking devices raises profound questions about privacy, civil liberties, and constitutional rights. Recent reports confirm that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has repeatedly deployed “fake cell towers,” also known as StingRays or IMSI catchers, to monitor, locate, and collect data from mobile phones. While ICE defends these tools as essential to enforcing immigration laws and combating crime, their covert use, often sweeping up the data of countless bystanders, underscores the growing tension between security imperatives and individual freedoms. Understanding this surveillance technology and its implications is crucial to evaluating not only the legality of ICE’s actions but also the broader stakes for democratic accountability in the digital age.

What Are Fake Cell Towers, StingRays, & How ICE Uses Them

Cell-site simulators, often called StingRays, IMSI catchers, fake cell towers, or cell site simulators, are devices that mimic legitimate cell towers in order to trick mobile phones into connecting to them. When a phone connects, the simulator can gather identifying data (such as IMSI or device ID), location information, and in some cases, even communications content. 

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These devices are not new. Law enforcement agencies (federal, state, local) have used them for years. ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) is no exception. According to reporting:

• ICE has used StingRay-type devices to track people by their phones, including location and identity. 
• In past years, the ACLU uncovered records confirming ICE (and CBP) uses them, but often without much public disclosure—secrecy is common. 
• Univision reported ICE used StingRay tools ~551 times over a recent three-year period to locate suspects via cell phones. 

The more recent Forbes article “How ICE Is Using Fake Cell Towers To Spy On People’s Phones” (Thomas Brewster) details new documents showing ICE obtaining warrants to use these devices, and deploying them in investigations.

Why ICE & Other Agencies Use This Technology

Law enforcement and ICE use cell site simulators for a few reasons:

1. Tracking suspects: If ICE or law enforcement believes someone is evading arrest, illegal reentry, or involved in transnational crime etc., using a StingRay or fake tower helps locate them when other means are unavailable.
2. Locating phones/devices when suspects do not use their real identities and when other tracking (GPS, WiFi) is not available.
3. Access to metadata or communications: depending on the device’s capabilities, the authorities may get more than just location—they could intercept communications or force a phone to downgrade to older, less secure cellular protocols which are easier to surveil. 
4. Secrecy / plausible deniability: These devices work covertly. Often the people targeted (and those near them) don’t know their phones are being forced to connect to a fake tower. This helps law enforcement conduct surveillance without alerting targets. 

Legal and Ethical Risks

While the tools are powerful, they carry serious risks and controversies.

1. Fourth Amendment / Constitutional Search Issues

The U.S. Constitution protects against unreasonable searches and seizures. Many argue using fake cell towers to conduct mass collection of phone identifiers, tracking location, or intercepting communications is a “search” under the Fourth Amendment, requiring probable cause and a warrant. In many cases, ICE and other agencies have used these devices without clear warrants. 

A recent DHS Inspector General report (for ICE HSI and Secret Service) found that these agencies “illegally used cell site simulators without a court order” in some instances because of misinterpretation of policy or statutory requirement. 

     2.Privacy of Bystanders

Because fake cell towers grab signals from all phones in range, they often sweep up data from people not targeted by ICE or law enforcement—people just in the vicinity, co-workers, family, etc. These “dragnet” effects raise big privacy concerns. 

    3. Lack of Transparency and Oversight

Many uses are secret. The public, courts, even sometimes Congress lack clarity about when, how often, and under what standard ICE is using this surveillance tech. ACLU, EFF, and others have sued ICE/CBP for records. 

     4.Potential for Abuse

Because the devices are powerful and stealthy, they can be misused to monitor activists, journalists, immigrants, or vulnerable populations without probable cause, or for purposes beyond what oversight allows. There is fear the tech could be used as a tool of intimidation or suppression. 

   5. Mismatch between policy and practice

Even when official guidelines exist, enforcement is uneven, and the definitions of “for cause,” what constitutes “real time location tracking,” what documentation or warrant is needed are not always consistent. Disputes over when ICE is following policy vs when it is operating in the shadows are common. 

What New Reporting Adds

The recent Forbes piece adds several new details:

• ICE is using warrants for some operations with fake cell towers, but the specifics of scope, targeting, and data collection in those operations are often redacted or kept confidential. 
• The documents show use of fake-tower surveillance in multi-block tracking (e.g. across 30+ blocks in Utah) in at least one case. 
• The number of operations (551 times over three years as per Univision) shows that these are not rare or isolated tools—but part of a regular surveillance toolbox for ICE. 

Why This Matters: The Stakes for Civil Liberties

1. Precedent for Warrantless/Overbroad Surveillance

When agencies like ICE use cell-site simulators frequently, possibly without strict warrants, it raises the risk of expanding surveillance powers beyond legal limits. Once norms shift, oversight tends to lag. This can erode constitutional protections.

       2. Chilling Effect

Immigrant communities already often distrust law enforcement. These surveillance tools deepen that fear: people might avoid carrying phones, avoid certain public spaces, or avoid speaking out. These tools threaten privacy, association, free speech.

        3. Inequality in Enforcement

There is concern that ICE uses these tools disproportionately against immigrants or people of color, or in neighborhoods with less political power or less media scrutiny. The lack of transparency makes it hard to know precisely, but patterns suggest that marginalized groups are often most affected.

        4. Potential for Scope Creep

What starts as tracking for “serious crimes” or immigration enforcement could spread to less serious cases, or to political spying, protest monitoring, etc. Without strong constraints, abuse is a serious risk.

        5. Erosion of Trust in Institutions

When people find out these tools are used without adequate notice or oversight, trust in law enforcement, ICE, and government generally declines—especially among communities already vulnerable to over policing or targeted surveillance.

Legal & Policy Questions: What Must be Addressed

• Clear Warrant Standard: When must ICE get a warrant? Should real-time location tracking via fake towers always require probable cause and judicial approval?
• Transparency & Reporting Requirements: ICE should publish how many times these devices are used, under what legal authority, what data is collected, how long it’s retained, who reviews use, etc.
• Oversight & Accountability: Independent oversight (judicial, legislative) is essential. Mechanisms for redress should exist for those whose rights are violated.
• Limits on Data Collection from Bystanders: Policies should limit how much data is collected from non-target phones, and require immediate deletion of irrelevant data.
• Review of Contracting & External Tech Use: Ensure that when ICE contracts with private surveillance technology providers, those contracts have strict limits, auditing, and privacy protections.
• Public Awareness & Technological Safeguards: Users should have more control and warning. Phone manufacturers and OS developers may build in features that flag fake cell towers, require encrypted communication, etc.

Conclusion

ICE’s use of fake cell towers and StingRays is real, documented, and occurring with some frequency. On its face, such technology can help law enforcement track dangerous suspects or enforce immigration laws. But the way it is often deployed—secretly, with limited oversight, sometimes without clear legal warrant, and sweeping up data on bystanders—poses grave risks to privacy, constitutional rights, trust, and civil liberties, especially among immigrant communities.

The recent revelations about ICE’s activity, number of operations, and the alarms raised by watchdogs and civil rights groups show that we are at a critical juncture. If democratic norms and constitutional protections are to mean anything, they must include how the government surveils citizens and non-citizens alike. Without reforms—legal, policy, technological—there is serious danger that what was once extraordinary surveillance becomes normalized, and that privacy becomes the exception, not the rule.

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