GUEST OPINION
‘No Data Center’ information table in Monterey Park (File Photo – Je-Show Yang)
From Monterey Park to City of Industry, Montebello, El Monte, Covina, and more, data center protests have spread across the SGV. These communities, also targets of ICE raids, are drawing connections between the two.
By Emerald Tse and Nicholas Rabb
For months, community members across the San Gabriel Valley have warned about the risks of higher electricity bills, air and noise pollution, and increased water consumption in an already water scarce region. But during public comment at City Council meetings, some people raised an important, and often overlooked, reason to oppose new data center projects: mass surveillance, particularly by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has been raiding communities across the San Gabriel Valley.
The Department of Homeland Security relies on cloud computing, backed by privately run data centers across the country, to store and analyze the vast troves of data it uses to surveil and target our communities. Anything that takes place “in the cloud,” including ICE’s digital surveillance, is powered by a data center. Hyperscale data centers, like the one proposed in Monterey Park, offer the greatest computing power.
Year after year, ICE and other DHS agencies have aggressively expanded the sources of data they use to identify and locate individuals for deportation. With each new data‑driven tool comes a commercial cloud provider supplying remote access to data‑center‑backed computing resources. By 2021, ICE’s surveillance operations depended on more than 90 data systems hosted on Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.
Under Trump, federal immigration authorities have drastically expanded their arsenal of digital surveillance tools. On January 28, DHS released an updated list of the technologies it classifies as “artificial intelligence,” revealing recent investments in more than 200 data‑intensive products. ICE and CBP are responsible for 134 of these tools, including Mobile Fortify — the mobile app that retrieves detailed profiles on individuals by scanning their faces — and Motorola’s license plate readers, which federal agents use to track vehicles across time and location. Nearly a quarter of ICE and CBP’s latest investments are for the most resource‑intensive tools, such as ELITE, the Palantir app that extracts data from existing databases to create a digital map for ICE to identify neighborhoods, households, and individuals to target for deportation.
It’s no surprise, then, that federal immigration authorities have also increased spending on data‑center‑powered cloud services. In 2025, ICE and Customs and Border Protection spent $140 million on cloud products. During the latter half of that year — when the number of people in immigration detention reached record highs, ICE more than tripled its use of Microsoft’s Azure cloud alone.
In the near future, we can expect ICE to devote much of its $85 billion budget to maintaining and expanding its surveillance arsenal, requiring even greater data‑processing power. Each new hyperscale data center risks enabling ICE to use more digital technology to track, surveil, and deport our neighbors. But that also means each blocked data center may slow down ICE’s deportation machine.
As the federal government works to fast‑track data center construction and prevent state regulation of harmful technologies, cities and counties still have the power to disrupt new data center development, and they’re doing so in nearly every region of the country. In Monterey Park, a months‑long campaign pushed the City Council to adopt a temporary citywide ban while exploring more permanent measures through both local ordinance and ballot initiative.
As federal agents continue to intimidate, abuse, detain, and deport our community members, people are finding ways to resist. Fighting the construction of data centers is one way to do so.
Emerald Tse is an Associate at the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law, studying the digital surveillance of immigrant communities.
Nicholas Rabb is a postdoctoral researcher at California State University, Los Angeles, studying AI in education. He holds a PhD in computer science and cognitive science from Tufts University.
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