Two FPDS payments—despite being made in 2020 and 2022, prior to the period WIRED examined—are significant enough to warrant mention. They revealed that Amazon was providing infrastructure for ICE’s Repository for Analytics in a Virtualized Environment (RAVEn), a tool for agents to analyze “raw or unevaluated datasets”—including documents, photos, audio, and other data—over a dozen federal databases. A DHS Office of the Inspector General report from 2023 describes RAVEn as an “internally developed” tool. It includes a primary “search and analytic tool,” a tool for sharing “lead referrals and outcomes” across HSI field offices, and a mobile app.
RAVEn was intended at its inception to be a replacement for Palantir’s FALCON. A Palantir spokesperson confirmed this, adding, “as we understand it, after several years, RAVEn is no longer serviceable, having run into both cost and functionality challenges.”
A version of the 2026 DHS Appropriations Act considered by the House of Representatives in January includes a provision claiming that HSI has “outstanding briefing requirements and requests related to RAVEn development and deployment that are overdue by more than one year.” It’s unclear whether Amazon has continued to support RAVEn.
According to a payment on FPDS, Amazon has also given CBP access to “AWS Elemental Live,” which provides technical infrastructure for livestreams. However, there isn’t much additional information about what Amazon helps the agency do.
In February, dozens of “community members, activists and Amazon employees” gathered outside the company’s corporate headquarters in Seattle to protest the company’s work with ICE, the Seattle Times reported.
Amazon did not return WIRED’s request for comment.
Both ICE and CBP use Google’s cloud environment to help run their operations, though the payment descriptions for the ICE contracts reveal relatively little about how and where Google’s tech is being used when compared with those from CBP. According to payment descriptions on FPDS, CBP uses Google Cloud to run its “Enterprise Cloud Services Division,” which the agency describes as “a Cloud governance body with authority over Cloud infrastructure and Cloud service.”
Google has also helped CBP use generative AI for “Document Summarization and Content Generation” since March of last year, alongside Meta, OpenAI, and Anthropic, according to DHS documentation. It’s unclear, however, what specific documents are being summarized or the CBP office that’s involved.
According to a SAM entry last updated in February 2025, CBP’s cloud-based “Modular Google Environment” (MAGE) supports the “current infrastructure” of one of its surveillance systems. The entry relates to CBP’s “Integrated Fixed Towers,” the 10-foot surveillance towers that help the agency surveil remote areas of Arizona. In one environmental review, the agency said it was using the towers to find and apprehend terrorists, people crossing the border illegally, and anyone smuggling “humans, drugs, and other contraband.”
Dave Maass, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's investigations director who has studied CBP’s surveillance hardware, tells WIRED that it's unclear exactly how much CBP may rely on Google for its existing operations. He adds that it’s also been historically difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of CBP’s surveillance tower program.