ICE bought vehicles equipped with fake cell towers to spy on phones 

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) paid $825,000 earlier this year to a company that manufactures vehicles equipped with various technologies for law enforcement, including fake cellphone towers known as “cell-site simulators,” which can be used to spy on nearby phones.  

According to public records, the award dated May 8 “provides Cell Site Simulator (CSS) Vehicles to support the Homeland Security Technical Operations program” and is a modification for “additional CSS Vehicles.”  

The contract was signed with TechOps Specialty Vehicles (TOSV), a Maryland-based company. TOSV also signed a similar contract with ICE in September 2024 for $818,000, showing that the relationship between the agency and the company predates the Trump administration.  

TOSV president Jon Brianas told TechCrunch in an email that he could not provide details about the ICE contracts and the vehicles, citing “trade secrets.” But Brianas did confirm that the company does provide cell-site simulators, although it does not make them. 

“We don’t manufacture electrical, comms, and technology components, we integrate that product into our overall design of the vehicle,” said Brianas, who declined to say from where TOSV sources its cell-site simulators.  

This is the latest federal contract that reveals some of the technologies powering the Trump administration’s deportation crackdown. 

In early September, Forbes found a recently unsealed search warrant that showed that ICE used a cell-site simulator to track down a person who allegedly was part of a criminal gang in the United States, and who had been ordered to leave the country in 2023. In the article, Forbes reported that it also found a contract for “cell site simulator vehicles,” but the article did not name the company that provides the vans to the agency. 

Cell-site simulators also go by the name “stingrays” because some of the earlier types of these devices, made by defense contractor Harris (now L3Harris), were named that way. Since then, stingrays have become a catch-all name for this type of technology, also known as IMSI catchers. (IMSI stands for International Mobile Subscriber Identity, a unique number that identifies every cellphone user in the world.) 

As the name suggests, cell-site simulators tools can mimic a cellphone tower, tricking every phone in its nearby range to connect to the device and thus giving law enforcement the ability to better identify the real-world location of those phones and their owners.  

Some cell-site simulators can also intercept regular calls, text messages, and internet traffic. 

Authorities can get data from traditional cellphone towers to find the current or past location of a suspect, but the location is usually not very precise.  

Stingray-like devices have been in use by law enforcement for more than a decade and have long been controversial because authorities do not always get a warrant for their use, and critics say these devices ensnare innocent people by default. These devices are also shrouded in secrecy, because the law enforcement agencies who use them are under strict non-disclosure agreements not to reveal how the devices work. 

ICE has a long history of using cell-site simulators. In 2020, documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union showed that ICE deployed them at least 466 times between 2017 and 2019. The agency used these tools more than 1,885 times between 2013 and 2017, according to documents obtained by BuzzFeed News at the time. 

ICE acknowledged TechCrunch’s request for comment, but did not respond to a series of questions, which included: what ICE uses these vehicles for, whether and where they have recently been deployed, and whether the agency always gets a warrant when using cell-site simulators.  

From surveillance vans to bookmobiles 

Headquartered just outside of Washington D.C., TOSV sells a wide range of customizable vehicles to law enforcement, such as vans for SWAT armed response teams, bomb squads, and so-called “mobile lab” and “cover surveillance” vehicles.  

Among these vehicles for police forces, TOSV lists several “projects,” including one described as DHS Mobile Forensic Labs, referring to the Department of Homeland Security. 

According to the website, these mobile forensic vans are “equipped for on-site forensic analysis and documentation,” have “secure compartments for evidence preservation and investigative tools,” and enable “seamless case file updates and evidence logging.” 

Another project is the DHS Mobile Command Van,” which TOSV says it’s “configurable for advanced surveillance and mission coordination.”  

It’s unclear if these vans are the same vehicles that include cell-site simulators, as there’s no mention of the phone surveillance tool anywhere on TOSV’s website.  

ICE has other contracts with TOSV for mobile forensic labs, which don’t specify what technologies are located in the vans. 

According to its website, TOSV also sells so-called “bookmobiles,” which appear to be libraries on wheels, as well as medical, and fire department vehicles.