ICE’s $85 Billion Surveillance Machine Includes Skydio Drones for Protest Monitoring and Roving No-Fly Zones for Everyone Else

The Washington Post published a comprehensive investigation this week into ICE’s rapidly expanding surveillance technology arsenal, and the drone angle is something every pilot in this country needs to understand. Buried within the details of facial recognition apps, phone-hacking spyware, and cell-site simulators is a quiet but aggressive expansion of federal drone operations, paired with an airspace restriction that effectively creates invisible no-fly zones wherever ICE decides to operate.

Here is what you need to know:

• The Development: ICE signed a $514,000 contract last fall for new drones, including the Skydio X10D, which can detect individuals from 7.5 miles and identify them from 0.8 miles. ICE has already been using small drones to monitor protests over the past year.
• The Airspace Impact: On January 16, the FAA issued NOTAM FDC 6/4375, banning all civilian drone flights within 3,000 feet of ICE operations. The restriction moves with DHS assets, meaning the no-fly zone can appear wherever ICE operates.
• The Funding: The One Big Beautiful Bill Act gave ICE $85 billion, making it America’s highest-funded law enforcement agency. Drones are one piece of a tech stack that includes facial recognition, phone location tracking, license plate readers, and spyware.

ICE bought Skydio’s most advanced surveillance drone

ICE’s $514,000 drone purchase includes the Skydio X10D, a purpose-built defense and public safety drone that the company advertises as capable of detecting individuals from 7.5 miles away and positively identifying them from 0.8 miles. The X10D carries a dual-sensor payload with optical zoom and thermal imaging, and it can operate autonomously using Skydio’s AI-powered obstacle avoidance.

According to the Washington Post’s reporting, drones are “an increasingly ubiquitous part of federal law enforcement agencies’ field operations, providing real-time aerial video back to a base.” Many of the models ICE operates are equipped with night vision and thermal cameras. Skydio did not respond to the Post’s request for comment.

The purchase comes on top of ICE’s existing access to far larger platforms. Its sister agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, operates MQ-9 Predator drones with 65-foot wingspans. CBP flew those military-grade aircraft over anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles last summer, the first time Predator drones had been deployed over domestic demonstrations since the George Floyd protests in 2020. The drones fly at 20,000 feet and beam live video to multiple agencies, including ICE and the military.

A spokesman for General Atomics, the MQ-9’s manufacturer, told the Post that the baseline drones include high-definition cameras with infrared sensing and radar that can see through clouds, rain, and fog. CBP said in 2020 that cameras aboard its MQ-9 fleet could identify clothing color and whether someone carried a backpack, but could not identify a face. Whether upgrades have changed that capability remains unclear.

ICE confirmed using small drones to monitor protests

The Post’s reporting confirms what civil liberties groups have warned about for years: drones originally purchased for border enforcement are being turned inward. ICE has been using small drones to monitor some protests over the past year. The agency has also posted drone footage of anti-ICE protesters on social media, claiming they were “obstructing the duties” of its officers.

This tracks with a broader pattern DroneXL has been following. When DHS launched Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago last fall, the agency closed the city’s airspace to all civilian drones while federal drones and helicopters conducted surveillance overhead. That TFR covered more than 935 square miles and grounded every Part 107 operator in the city for weeks. The National Press Photographers Association called it the largest drone ban ever imposed in the United States and an attack on press freedom.

ICE is not the only agency turning Skydio drones on demonstrators. The NYPD has been doing it for months. DroneXL was on the ground in New York City when the department first deployed a Skydio X10 over No Kings protesters on Fifth Avenue in June 2025. By October, the operation had scaled dramatically. NYPD’s Technical Assistance Response Unit (TARU) flew as many as nine Skydio X10 drones over the No Kings march from Times Square to 14th Street, none equipped with parachute recovery systems, despite the aircraft weighing 4.65 pounds and hovering at 200 feet directly over marching crowds. One drone had a near-miss with a helium balloon. A TARU officer told DroneXL at the scene that the NYPD had already logged over 20,000 drone flights in 2025.

The consequences went beyond surveillance. According to a report by the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.), the NYPD conducted 6,546 drone flights in the first six months of 2025 alone, a 3,200% increase since 2022. The watchdog confirmed that the NYPD used drone footage to identify and arrest protesters. S.T.O.P. research director Eleni Manis said the surveillance “really chills freedom of expression” and that “drones shouldn’t surveil protesters, and they certainly shouldn’t be used to identify protesters.”

The NYPD is mandated to fly Skydio, the same manufacturer whose X10D model ICE just purchased. As one TARU agent told DroneXL, “The entire NYPD now has to fly Skydio drones” instead of the less expensive DJI alternatives. That means the same drone platform is now in the hands of both federal immigration enforcement and the nation’s largest municipal police department, both deploying it over political demonstrations.

The MSNBC segment featuring journalist Jake Ward, host of The Rip Current podcast, put it bluntly. “We are in a world now where this stuff is being deployed actively on American citizens,” Ward said. “It’s no wonder these guys wear masks. It is the clearest sign that they understand what the technological array that they have at their disposal makes possible when you are unmasked in public these days.”

FAA NOTAM creates roving invisible no-fly zones around ICE operations

FAA NOTAM FDC 6/4375, issued January 16, 2026, is arguably the most consequential airspace restriction for civilian drone pilots in recent memory. The notice bans all unmanned aircraft within 3,000 feet laterally and 1,000 feet vertically of DHS facilities, vehicles, vessels, and convoys, and classifies those areas as “national defense airspace.”

Unlike traditional Temporary Flight Restrictions, the NOTAM does not provide geographic coordinates, activation times, or public notification when the restriction is in effect near a specific location. The restricted airspace moves with DHS assets. That means the no-fly zone can appear wherever ICE or other DHS units decide to operate.

The ACLU’s Jay Stanley called the order “ridiculous” and said it “seems to warn that anyone flying a drone anywhere in the country would be in violation if an ICE or Border Patrol ‘convoy’ decides to drive beneath them.” Brandon Youngblood, the former head of the FAA’s UAS Security and C-UAS Integration office who wrote the original NOTAM that 6/4375 replaced, said the earlier restriction “was never meant to cover all DHS ground assets which are literally everywhere.”

The order replaced a previous NOTAM that had been limited to naval vessels in U.S. coastal waters and Department of Energy assets transporting nuclear materials. Extending it to DHS ground vehicles and their undefined “associated escorts” is an expansion that legal experts say should come from Congress, not an FAA security notice.

Violators face criminal charges, civil penalties, and the loss of their remote pilot authorization. The NOTAM also explicitly states that DHS, DOJ, and DOD are authorized to interfere with, seize, damage, or destroy unmanned aircraft that pose a credible threat.

Drones are one tool in a $1.4 billion surveillance spending spree

The drone purchases are one slice of a much larger technology acquisition effort. In September 2025 alone, ICE spent $1.4 billion on new surveillance contracts, the highest single-month figure in at least 18 years. The full arsenal, as detailed by the Post and covered in the MSNBC segment, includes:

Mobile Fortify is a facial recognition app made by NEC that lets ICE agents point a phone at someone’s face and check their immigration status in seconds. Photos are stored for 15 years, even if there is no match. A 2018 MIT Media Lab study found facial recognition error rates of 0.8% for light-skinned men compared to 34.7% for darker-skinned women.

Cell-site simulators, known as stingrays, trick phones into connecting to a fake cell tower, allowing ICE to track a device’s location in real time. ICE guidelines include broad emergency exceptions that critics say allow deployment without warrants.

Phone location databases collected by commercial data brokers from weather apps, mobile games, and other software bypass the Supreme Court’s 2018 ruling in Carpenter v. United States, which required warrants for cell phone location data from carriers. ICE quietly re-purchased a subscription to one such database in September 2025 after claiming it had stopped the practice.

Digital forensics tools allow ICE to hack into locked phones and computers, accessing multimedia, passwords, communications, locations, deleted files, and encrypted chats. The Post reported that top Trump officials ordered these investigative resources shifted from child exploitation and trafficking cases toward the deportation drive.

Clearview AI received a $3.75 million contract in September. ICE expanded its authorized use from child exploitation investigations to also include “assaults against law enforcement officers.” A $30 million Palantir contract built “ImmigrationOS,” an AI platform for predicting deportation targets.

The pattern: government flies drones overhead while grounding everyone else

What makes this story particularly relevant for drone pilots is the emerging two-tier airspace system. The federal government is simultaneously expanding its own aerial surveillance fleet while systematically preventing civilian drone operators from flying anywhere near those operations.

The timeline tells the story. In June 2025, the NYPD flew a Skydio X10 over No Kings protesters on Fifth Avenue and CBP flew MQ-9 Predators over LA protests. In October, NYPD scaled to nine Skydio drones over Manhattan’s No Kings march while DHS imposed the largest civilian drone ban in history over Chicago. In November, the S.T.O.P. watchdog exposed the NYPD’s 3,200% flight surge and confirmed drone footage was used to arrest protesters. In December, Border Patrol expanded its small drone fleet to roughly 500 aircraft across nearly every sector. In January 2026, the FAA created roving no-fly zones around every DHS operation in the country.

Meanwhile, Texas DPS quietly built a 450-drone fleet under Operation Lone Star. DPS training slides state that within 25 miles of the border, images of people and property may be captured without consent. And as we reported earlier this month, Las Vegas police logged 10,000 drone flights in 2025, making it the nation’s most active law enforcement drone program, while refusing to disclose costs.

The consistent thread: government drone programs expand with minimal oversight while civilian operators face growing restrictions that lack geographic specificity, advance notice, or meaningful avenues for challenge.

DroneXL’s Take

I’ve been covering the intersection of drones, law enforcement, and civil liberties for years, and what’s happening right now is a qualitative shift. We’re no longer debating whether government agencies will use drones for domestic surveillance. That question is settled. We stood on the streets of Manhattan and watched NYPD fly nine Skydio drones directly over protesters without parachutes. We documented the balloon near-miss. We reported the 20,000-flight count. Now ICE has bought the same drone’s defense variant. The question is no longer if. It is whether civilian drone pilots will be allowed to document what those agencies do.

The trajectory is clear. Chicago’s 935-square-mile TFR last October was a test run. The January 16 NOTAM turned that test into permanent national policy. Every ICE convoy, every DHS vehicle, every undefined “associated escort” now carries an invisible 3,000-foot no-fly bubble. No advance notice. No geographic coordinates. No way to check compliance before you launch.

And ICE is spending heavily to fill its side of the sky. The Skydio X10D can identify a person from nearly a mile away. Combine that capability with Clearview AI’s facial recognition database, Palantir’s predictive targeting, and the cell-site simulators that track phones in real time, and you have a surveillance system where drones are not just cameras in the sky. They are the tip of a data collection apparatus that connects aerial video to biometric databases in seconds.

Here is what I expect in the next six months: legal challenges to NOTAM 6/4375 will force the FAA to either narrow the restriction or defend it in court. The News Media Coalition has already called it a violation of the First and Fifth Amendments. The ACLU is preparing its own challenge. But until those cases work through the system, every drone pilot in America operates under a restriction they cannot see, cannot predict, and cannot verify.

This is not about whether law enforcement should use drones. We’ve covered the legitimate benefits extensively. Search and rescue, disaster response, officer safety, missing persons cases. Those are real. But when the same government that grounds your drone to film a protest is simultaneously expanding its own fleet to monitor that protest from above, the word for that is not security. It is control.

Editorial Note: This article was researched and drafted with the assistance of AI to ensure technical accuracy and archive retrieval. All insights, industry analysis, and perspectives were provided exclusively by Haye Kesteloo and our other DroneXL authors, editors, and YouTube partners to ensure the “Human-First” perspective our readers expect.