ICE Hands Bi2 a $25M No-Bid Deal for 1,570 Iris Scanners by Late June

ICE has finalized a $25.1 million sole-source award to Massachusetts firm Bi2 Technologies for iris-recognition hardware and access to a biometric database of more than five million booking records. The contract, posted to SAM.gov on May 22, is roughly five times the value of the agency’s September 2025 deal with Bi2 and covers 1,570 handheld units — nearly eight times the prior device count — slated for delivery to ICE field offices by the end of June.

The Enforcement and Removal Operations division will use the scanners to identify subjects during field encounters, with continuous query access to Bi2’s records. Notably, the procurement skipped FedRAMP certification, the standard federal review for cloud systems handling sensitive data, and the award documents reference no independent audit, congressional notification, or external oversight of how the system will be deployed.

The rapid scale-up and the absence of competitive bidding or security vetting raise familiar concerns about biometric dragnets being fielded faster than governance can keep pace. A database tied to booking records, queried from the field on agent-held devices, becomes a high-value target and a durable identifier system with minimal public scrutiny over accuracy, retention, or downstream sharing.