Earlier this year, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) paid $825,000 to a company that makes vehicles equipped with various technology for law enforcement, including fake cell phone towers known as “cell site simulators” that can be used to spy on nearby phones.
According to public records, the May 8 award “provides for cell site simulator (CSS) vehicles in support of the Homeland Security Technology Operations Program” and is a modification for “additional CSS vehicles.”
The contract was signed with Maryland-based company TechOps Specialty Vehicles (TOSV). TOSV signed a similar contract with ICE in September 2024 for $818,000, indicating that the company’s relationship predates the Trump administration.
TOSV President John Brianas told TechCrunch in an email that he could not provide details about the ICE contract and vehicles, citing “trade secrets.” However, Brianas acknowledged that the company does not manufacture cell site simulators, but does offer them.
“We don’t just manufacture electrical, communications and technical components; we integrate those products into the overall design of the vehicle,” Brianas said, declining to say where TOSV sources its cell site simulators.
This is the latest federal contract to reveal some of the technology that will power the Trump administration’s deportation enforcement efforts.
In early September, Forbes uncovered recently unsealed search warrants showing that ICE had used a cell site simulator to track a member of a U.S. criminal organization who was deported in 2023. In the article, Forbes reported that it had also discovered a contract for a “cell site simulator vehicle,” but the article did not name the company providing the van to authorities.
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The cell site simulator is also known by the name “Stingray”. This is because some of the early types of these devices manufactured by defense contractor Harris (now L3Harris) were so named. Since then, stingrays have become known as the generic name for this type of technology, and are also known as IMSI catchers. (IMSI stands for International Mobile Subscriber Identity, a unique number that identifies every mobile phone user around the world.)
As the name suggests, the cell site simulator tool mimics a cell phone tower and tricks all nearby phones into connecting to your device, allowing law enforcement to more accurately determine the actual location of these phones and their owners.
Some cell site simulators can also intercept regular phone calls, text messages, and internet traffic.
Although authorities can obtain data from traditional cell phone towers to determine a suspect’s current or past location, the location is usually not very accurate.
Devices like the Stingray have been used by law enforcement for more than a decade, but they have long been controversial because authorities do not always obtain a warrant for their use and critics argue that these devices trap innocent people by default. These devices are also shrouded in secrecy, as the law enforcement agencies that 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. Documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union in 2020 found that ICE deployed these tools at least 466 times between 2017 and 2019. ICE 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, including what it uses these vehicles for, whether and where they have been deployed recently, and whether it always obtains a warrant when using cell tower simulators.
From surveillance vans to bookmobiles
Headquartered outside Washington, D.C., TOSV sells a wide range of customizable vehicles to law enforcement agencies, including vans for SWAT armed response teams, bomb squads, and so-called “mobile lab” and “reconnaissance surveillance” vehicles.
Among these police vehicles, TOSV lists several “projects,” including one called the DHS Mobile Forensic Science Laboratory, a reference 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 storage and investigative tools,” and enable “seamless case file updates and evidence recording.”
Another project is the DHS Mobile Command Van, which TOSV says is “configurable for advanced surveillance and mission coordination.”
It is unclear whether these vans are the same vehicles equipped with cell site simulators, as there is no mention of phone monitoring tools anywhere on TOSV’s website.
ICE has other agreements with TOSV for mobile forensic laboratories, but it does not specify what technology the vans are equipped with.
According to the company’s website, TOSV not only sells medical vehicles and fire engines, but also so-called “bookmobiles” that look like libraries on wheels.
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