ICE Uses LexisNexis' Access to Local Police Records for Deportation

The 2024 case, which has not previously been reported, shows ICE using LexisNexis to circumvent the Illinois TRUST act, preventing access to local law enforcement records.

On September 16, 2024, Belleville, Illinois police arrested Andres Jimenez-Santiago for driving under the influence and aggravated battery to a police officer. He was booked into the St. Clair County jail. The next day, an ICE deportation officer found him.

According to a federal criminal complaint filed in February 2025 in the Southern District of Illinois (Case No. 3:25-cr-30036), the officer learned of the arrest “after searching St. Clair County, Illinois jail bookings on LexisNexis.” The affidavit goes on to explain, in the government’s own words, that those bookings are part of the Accurint Virtual Crime Center database used by ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations officers. The officer matched the county booking photos against federal photos taken before Jimenez-Santiago’s 2019 removal to Mexico, and a felony reentry case was born.

Illinois has some of the strictest laws in the U.S. about local law enforcement sharing data with federal immigration authorities. The TRUST Act, strengthened by the 2021 Way Forward Act, bars state and local law enforcement from assisting federal civil immigration enforcement, including sharing information about anyone held in a local jail absent a federal criminal warrant. ERO is the civil deportation arm of ICE, and on September 17 there was no search warrant listed in the court records. ICE had no need for one. St. Clair County’s booking records flow into a commercial database, and ICE pays for access. Recent reporting indicates they may start going beyond searches by feeding LexisNexis data into Palantir - a sprawling database ICE uses for targeting.

LexisNexis markets its Jail Booking Search as covering local booking data from facilities in 41 states plus DC and state corrections data from 27 states, which the company says equates to over 80% of all incarcerations in the United States. ICE has paid for access since 2021 under a contract worth up to $22.1 million, and records obtained by Just Futures Law and Mijente showed the agency ran 1.2 million searches in a single seven-month stretch that year. In its own procurement justification, ICE described this access as critical precisely because sanctuary policies were cutting off the direct route.

Illinois has fought over this pipeline before. Cook County held hearings in 2022 after residents discovered their jail data reaching ICE through the county’s victim notification vendor, immigrant rights groups sued LexisNexis in Cook County court later that year, and as of this summer the State’s Attorney’s Office is still trying to close the loophole in its Appriss contract. But those fights centered on Chicago and Cook County. The Jimenez-Santiago complaint shows the same pipeline running downstate, off an ordinary DUI arrest, documented by a deportation officer describing his own workflow.

ICE plainly states the mechanism under oath: a local arrest on Monday, a booking record uploaded to a private broker, a federal search on Tuesday. Five months later following a court appearance, ICE took Jimenez-Santiago into custody. While the TRUST Act limits what the jail can share with federal authorities, it appears local jurisdictions view data laundering through a private broker as a loophole to the state law.

The LexisNexis Accurint Virtual Crime Center referenced in the agent’s court filing contains over 100 million records from local law enforcement agencies. This includes data on minors, victims, and witnesses. Since 2024, LexisNexis has expanded their Accurint product to include facial recognition, license plate readers, pawn shop data, social media monitoring, and access to search hacked data from data breaches.