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We live in a police state. The federal government has built a surveillance machine so vast, so invasive and so unaccountable that it would have been unimaginable just twenty years ago.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement can now synthesize a vast array of data to determine its targets. ICE is partnering with companies like Palantir and Paragon to hack into our phones and access our photos, texts and location. It is taking the position that it does not need to respect the Fourth Amendment if it buys this data. FBI director Kash Patel openly talked about how his agency is buying our data to track us, and Anthropic and the Pentagon are in a high-profile fight over the Pentagon’s desire to use AI to spy on the American people.
With that backdrop, Denver City Council is currently considering a new surveillance tech contract with Axon Enterprises that should alarm every Denver resident. This proposed contract for license plate=reading cameras (LPRs) presents a grave threat to Denverites’ privacy and civil liberties, and would provide the Trump administrations’ Department of Homeland Security and ICE with eyes and ears throughout our city if approved by council.
Public pressure over these concerns led the city to end its relationship with Flock Safety. The proposed contract with Axon presents the exact same concerns, however, which is why I am urging Denver City Council to reject it. I’ve been moved by our community’s tireless fight to push Flock Safety out of our city — a company whose cameras are actively feeding data into the Trump administration’s deportation machine. Now, Mayor Mike Johnston is asking our council to turn around and sign a new contract with Axon, a company with even deeper ties to the federal immigration enforcement apparatus.
This is the same problem with a different logo. Axon has been awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts with ICE and DHS, including a $370 million indefinite delivery contract with Customs and Border Protection and a $21.5 million contract with ICE for conducted energy weapons. ICE has awarded Axon more than $16 million in new contracts, including body cameras and TASERs that have been deployed in deportation raids. The company’s CEO has told investors directly that expanding DHS partnerships is a core growth strategy.
If you want to understand Axon’s relationship to this administration at a human level, consider this: The man running Axon’s DHS strategy is Ronald D. Vitiello, the official who presided over the implementation of the family separation policy at our southern border as acting director of ICE under the first Trump administration. This man is now Axon’s bridge to the federal enforcement apparatus.
Mayor Johnston has promised that Axon’s cameras will protect Denverites, that there’s no national database, that the data stays local and that the privacy protections are real. But federal pressure can override local policy. And a company that has made itself indispensable to ICE and DHS operations doesn’t become a neutral vendor because it signs a city contract.
There are also serious questions about where this technology is heading. Axon has been explicit about its “AI era plan,” which envisions real-time integration of camera feeds, field data and AI analysis through its Fusus platform. In 2023, the company bought a military drone manufacturer after nine members of its own AI Ethics Board resigned over concerns about the direction of its technology. This is the company that Denver is being asked to trust with cameras pointed at our streets and cataloging our every move.
Our neighbors are scared. They are living in fear of a lawless immigration enforcement apparatus that scoffs at court orders, separates families, disappears people into detention centers rife with abuse and medical neglect, and brutalizes people based on the color of their skin. License plate data is one of the tools that fuels this grievous assault on our constitution and way of life.
Denver’s tax dollars should not flow to companies whose business model depends on the surveillance and deportation of our neighbors. I urge my colleagues on Denver City Council to vote no on this contract. We do not need Flock, Axon or any company like them in Denver. Our community is safer without them.
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