DHS signs a $2.9 million no-bid contract for a platform that can track phones in real time

What happened

Prism reported on April 29, 2026 that the Department of Homeland Security had awarded a $2.9 million no-bid contract for Penlink PLX, beginning April 1, with a potential value of $8.3 million. PLX intercepts, aggregates and analyzes live phone, text and internet activity and performs geospatial tracking from real-time phone pings and app data.

The license was for the Homeland Security Task Force, co-led by the FBI and ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations, and was routed through Chenega Defense and Aerospace Solutions. It supplemented a $2.3 million ICE contract from September 2025 for Penlink’s Webloc and Tangles tools.

It is unclear how PLX obtains location data. The source could be carriers, app-derived advertising data sold by brokers, or other sources. Federal agencies including ICE, CBP and the IRS have for years bought commercially available location data rather than seeking warrants. In March, more than 70 lawmakers led by Sen. Ron Wyden asked the DHS inspector general to investigate ICE’s location-data buying.

Who benefited

Penlink, a surveillance-software vendor, gained a DHS contract of $2.9 million with room to grow to $8.3 million. DHS enforcement components, chiefly ICE and Homeland Security Investigations, gained a tool for locating and tracking people without judicial process.

Who wanted something

DHS under Secretary Kristi Noem has expanded commercial-data acquisition as part of the deportation drive, and ICE procurement officials sought the tool. The administration has favored buying data from brokers over seeking warrants. The Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act, passed by the House in 2024, was written to stop the practice and did not become law.

Who lost out

Anyone whose phone generates location and activity data, which is nearly everyone, is within reach of the tool. Immigrants, protesters and journalists whom DHS has targeted are most exposed. Civil-liberties lawyers quoted by Prism argued that the data-broker market lets the government buy what it could otherwise get only with a warrant, order or subpoena.

Why it matters

The Supreme Court held in Carpenter v. United States in 2018 that cell-site location records are protected by the Fourth Amendment. A government that buys real-time location tracking from a vendor does not ask a court first. The contract is one instance of buying surveillance capacity through the market rather than through courts or Congress.

Sources Prism (republished by ScheerPost)USAspending.gov (primary)DHS Acquisition Planning Forecast System (primary)Prism