World
ICE Wants 1,570 Iris Scanners From the Only Vendor That Has Them
ICE's May 8 sole-source notice calls for 1,570 iris scanners; at $23,000 per unit the implied contract value is roughly $36 million. The vendor it named built its iris database from state and local jail bookings outside the federal enrollment pipeline.
ICE posted a sole-source notice on May 8, seeking 1,570 iris-scanning devices from Bi2 Technologies, the Massachusetts firm that built the only private national iris biometric network.
The named user is Enforcement and Removal Operations, the ICE division that runs detention facilities and executes field arrests nationwide. Contract documents from the initial Bi2 deployment describe two operational contexts: booking and release processing at detention centers, and mobile identity checks by agents during arrests and removals in the field.
The system pairs two Bi2 products: IRIS, a web-based database, and MORIS, a smartphone scanner that returns an iris match in seconds. IRIS holds 5.025 million booking records for 1.5 million unique individuals enrolled through 247-plus state and local agencies. ICE's existing field tool, EDDIE, runs fingerprints. Under field conditions, that process can take hours.
A September 2025 award gave ICE its initial Bi2 fleet: 200 devices for $4.6 million, roughly $23,000 per unit. DHS has not disclosed a ceiling for the May 2026 procurement; the May 8 document is a pre-solicitation Statement of Objectives, not a formal award notice. At that per-unit rate, 1,570 devices implies a contract value of roughly $36 million.
ICE wrote in its justification that Bi2 has developed "the only non-federal national real-time web-based iris biometric network" available, making competitive bidding legally inapplicable. The Statement of Objectives cites President Trump's border emergency declaration as the operational basis.
The Enrollment Gap
ICE's "non-federal" qualifier points to the jurisdiction that matters. The FBI's NGI iris service held roughly 2.5 million enrolled identities by mid-2023, accessed through CJIS since the program launched in 2013. Bi2's 247 contributing agencies routed their state and local jail bookings to a private database rather than CJIS, available through a smartphone in the field. ICE is buying both the different enrollment and the different channel.
The formal contract award must appear on SAM.gov. If the ceiling lands above $36 million, the sole-source justification will have cost the treasury a measurable premium over what competitive bidding would have priced.