ICE Awards $25 Million Iris-Scanning Contract to Bi2 Technologies
The no-bid deal is five times the size of the agency's previous contract with the Massachusetts company and could put devices in agents' hands by late June.
ICE has finalized the no-bid iris-scanning contract that Project Salt Box reported on this month, awarding Bi2 Technologies $25.1 million on May 22, according to a contract award posted to SAM.gov. The figure is more than five times what ICE spent on its first contract with the Massachusetts company eight months ago.
The award describes the purchase as covering iris biometric recognition technology and access to a biometric information system "to allow ICE agents to quickly authenticate the identity of subjects during field operations."
It gives ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations division continuous access to Bi2's database of more than five million booking records.
The procurement did not require the system to clear FedRAMP, the government’s security review for cloud systems handling sensitive data, before deployment. It described no independent audit, congressional notification or outside review of how the system would be used.
The May 22 award is roughly five times the $4.6 million DHS paid Bi2 in September 2025, and nearly eight times the device count — 1,570 units compared to 200.
Under the contract terms, those devices are due at ICE locations by late June.
Thank you for your reporting and service! It’s a horrible situation in this country right now 💔 but a reckoning is coming, for sure. Hard to see it now, but come it will. Nothing as unsustainable as the MAGA Regime can last that long. And the bigger they are, the harder they fall.
Wow … this is one of those hard to click on the heart but thank you for informing us.