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 cell phone towers known as “Cell-Site Simulators.”
The award, dated May 8, is for “Delivering Cell Site Simulator (CSS) Vehicles to Support Homeland Security Technical Operations Programs,” a change to “Additional CSS Vehicles,” according to public records.
The contract was signed with Techops Specialty Vehicles (TOSV), a Maryland-based company. TOSV also signed a similar contract with ICE for $818,000 in September 2024, indicating the agency’s relationship with the company predates the Trump administration.
TOSV president John Brianus told TechCrunch in an email that he could not provide details about the ICE contract and vehicles, citing “trade secrets.” However, Brianas confirmed that while the company offers cell site simulators, it does not create them.
“We do not manufacture electrical, communications or technical components; we integrate their products into the overall design of the vehicle,” he declined to say from where TOSV sources its cell site simulators.
This is the latest federal contract to reveal some of the technologies that will power the Trump administration’s deportation crackdown.
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In early September, Forbes uncovered recently unsealed search warrants showing ICE is using cell site simulators to track down people who are part of U.S. criminal gangs and ordered to leave the country in 2023. Forbes reported that it had also found a deal for a “cell site simulator vehicle,” but the article failed to praise the bank.
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Cell site simulators also go by the name “Stingrays”. That’s because some earlier types of these devices, created by defense contractor Harris (now L3Harris), were named that way. Since then, Stingrays has become a catchall name for this type of technology, also known as IMSI catchers. (IMSI stands for International Mobile Subscriber ID, a unique number that identifies every mobile phone user in the world.)
As the name suggests, the cell site simulator tool can imitate cell phone towers and trick all cell phones to connect nearby cell phones to the device, thus giving law enforcement the ability to better identify the real locations of those cell phones and their owners.
Some cell site simulators can also intercept routine calls, text messages, and internet traffic.
Authorities can retrieve data from traditional cell phone towers to find a suspect’s current or past location, but that location is usually not very accurate.
Devices like the Stingray have been used by law enforcement for more than a decade and have long been controversial because authorities don’t always get a warrant to use them, and critics say these devices lure innocent people by default. These devices are also shrouded in secrecy. That’s because the law enforcement agencies that use them are under strict non-disclosure agreements to not 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 granted TechCrunch’s request for comment but did not respond to a series of questions, including what these vehicles use, where and where they have been recently deployed, and whether the agency always obtains warrants when using cell site simulators.
From surveillance vans to bookmobiles
Headquartered just 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, so-called “mobile lab” and “cover surveillance” vehicles.
Among these vehicles for law enforcement, TOSV lists several “projects,” including one called the DHS Mobile Forensic Lab, which refers to the Department of Homeland Security.
According to the website, these mobile forensic vans are “equipped for forensic analysis and documentation in the field, 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 the TOSV says is “configurable for advanced surveillance and mission coordination.”
It is unclear if these vans are the same vehicle that includes a cell site simulator, as there is no mention of phone monitoring tools anywhere on TOSV’s website.
ICE has other contracts with TOSV for mobile forensic labs, but this one does not specify the technology that will be in the van.
According to its website, TOSV also sells so-called “bookmobiles.” As well as being a library on wheels, it also sells medical and fire department vehicles.
