When Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents descend on a meatpacking plant or construction site, arresting dozens of workers in the process, officials typically offer vague explanations for the operation, such as “routine enforcement” or cite “anonymous tips.” The reality is more troubling. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act—which Congress expanded in 2024—might be used for warrantless foreign intelligence surveillance to be systematically deployed against American businesses with overseas connections.
The problem is that it may never come to light. The evidentiary basis for these enforcement actions is concealed through a practice known as “parallel construction,” in which the true source of evidence is hidden behind an alternative investigative explanation. This means that neither the workers arrested nor the businesses raided may ever have a legal avenue to learn, let alone challenge, how they were identified.
The Surveillance Architecture
Section 702 allows intelligence agencies to collect communications of non-U.S. persons located abroad without a warrant. While the statute prohibits targeting Americans or people in the United States, the very nature of the structure and operation of the global telecommunications system guarantees the “incidental collection” of Americans’ communications when they contact people overseas.
In April 2024, Congress quietly expanded Section 702 through the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act. Tucked into the legislation was a provision requiring intelligence agencies to use Section 702 data to vet “all non-United States persons who are being processed for travel to the United States.” The language is vague. What constitutes “vetting”? Does it extend beyond visa applicants to include identifying people already here?
The expansion came shortly before the Trump administration launched the most aggressive immigration enforcement campaign in decades. Hundreds of thousands of people were deported in 2025. Entire industries—construction, agriculture, meatpacking, hospitality—saw workplace raids that seemed to rely on suspiciously accurate intelligence about the identities and locations of workers illegally in the United States and, in many cases, ostensibly unknown to federal authorities, raising questions about the intelligence basis for those operations.
The Targeting Strategy
A specific, real-world scenario may be instructive.
Many undocumented workers send money back to their families in their country of origin. Imagine a Mexican worker at a Tyson Foods plant in Arkansas who sends money to family in Mexico City every week. He calls them on weekends. His communications traverse international telecommunications networks—the very infrastructure Section 702 was designed to monitor.
Intelligence agencies could justify targeting those family members in Mexico under several rationales: identifying transnational smuggling networks, vetting potential visa applicants, or investigating remittance patterns that might indicate immigration fraud. The family members are non-U.S. persons abroad and thus eligible for targeting under Section 702 for “foreign intelligence” purposes.
Once their communications are collected, FBI agents could query Section 702 databases using the worker’s phone number, email address, or other identifiers. These “backdoor searches” retrieve his incidentally collected communications: his exact location, work schedule, home address, and the names of coworkers who also communicate with family abroad. Intelligence products derived from these queries can then be shared with ICE or other federal agencies.
Now ICE has a target list. But there’s a problem: using foreign intelligence surveillance for routine immigration enforcement likely violates statutory restrictions and perhaps the Fourth Amendment itself. How could government officials avoid a public legal fight over the issue? Never admit where the intelligence came from.
Parallel Construction in Action
Instead of referencing Section 702, ICE agents could construct an alternative investigative narrative — a contested law enforcement practice known as “parallel construction.” Perhaps they claim an “anonymous tip” about the plant. Maybe they cite “routine observations” of workers. They might even conduct surveillance of the facility to “independently verify” information they already obtained through signals intelligence.
When agents raid the plant, they never mention foreign intelligence. The arrest reports cite only the “independent” investigation. The company never learns its workforce was identified through warrantless surveillance. The workers never discover the constitutional violation. And because immigration proceedings are administrative rather than criminal, there’s minimal judicial oversight and no requirement to disclose investigative methods.
This isn’t paranoid speculation. The federal government has done this before.
The Drug Enforcement Administration used exactly this technique for years through its Special Operations Division, which received tips from NSA intercepts and instructed agents to conceal the intelligence source. Reuters exposed the practice in 2013. The only difference now is the target: instead of drug traffickers, it’s undocumented workers and their employers.
The Business Impact
The implications for American businesses are staggering. Industries that employ significant immigrant populations—representing hundreds of billions of dollars in economic activity—may be subject to warrantless government surveillance of their operations, employee rosters, and communications infrastructure.
Were ICE to raid a meatpacking plant based on Section 702 intelligence, the Fourth Amendment rights of the plant owner are violated just as surely as the rights of the workers. The company has a constitutional interest in its operations, its workforce, and its telecommunications. The Supreme Court recognized businesses’ Fourth Amendment protections in Marshall v. Barlow’s Inc. (1978), holding that warrantless government inspections violate the Fourth Amendment absent specific exceptions. Yet because parallel construction hides the surveillance basis, the business never has an opportunity to challenge the search in court.
Consider the due process violation: a company loses dozens or hundreds of workers, suffers severe operational disruption and economic harm, yet never learns the actual basis for the government action and therefore cannot seek judicial review. This isn’t law enforcement—it’s an unreviewable exercise of executive power.
The economic consequences compound the constitutional injury. Meat processing plants operate on thin margins and tight schedules. A single raid can shut down production for days or weeks, costing millions of dollars. Suppliers lose contracts and customers face shortages. Workers—including U.S. citizens and legal residents—lose jobs, all based on surveillance the company never knew occurred and cannot challenge.
The Oversight Vacuum
Where is the check on this potential abuse? The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court reviews procedures, not individual targeting decisions. The Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence have responsibility for ensuring FISA Section 702 queries are compliant with existing law and regulations, but not for determining whether immigration enforcement qualifies as “foreign intelligence.” Congressional oversight requires knowledge that the practice exists.
Most critically, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB)—the independent agency charged with reviewing surveillance programs—was gutted by President Trump in January 2025. He fired the Democratic members, leaving the board without a quorum to conduct investigations precisely when such oversight is most needed. The board’s remaining staff published a report this month finding that the current use of Section 702 data for travel vetting “may not be meeting congressional national security objectives,” a significant concession from an oversight body that itself appears to no longer have the quorum or independence to act on its own findings. Critics, including members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, noted that the report omitted entirely a classified matter concerning a secret interpretation of Section 702 that had been flagged in the board’s 2023 report.
Section 702 is now scheduled for reauthorization imminently. Congress will debate whether to renew, modify, or allow the authority to sunset. That debate should include hard questions about scope and implementation: Are intelligence agencies interpreting “foreign intelligence” to include routine immigration enforcement? Is Section 702 data being shared with ICE? Are businesses being targeted via warrantless surveillance of their immigrant workforce? And, crucially, are parallel construction techniques being used to conceal the constitutional basis for enforcement actions?
The Path Forward
These questions cannot be answered without transparency. Businesses subjected to workplace enforcement should demand disclosure of the investigative basis. Congressional oversight committees should require intelligence agencies to report on immigration-related uses of Section 702. Civil liberties organizations should seek records through the Freedom of Information Act.
Most importantly, any business that suspects its workforce was identified through surveillance should consider litigation. Discovery in civil cases can penetrate the secrecy that parallel construction is designed to maintain. Carpenter v. United States (2018) established that the government’s acquisition of cell-site location information constitutes a Fourth Amendment search requiring a warrant. If ICE cannot explain how agents knew exactly which workers to target without admitting to warrantless surveillance, that silence itself is potential evidence.
The convergence of mass surveillance infrastructure, aggressive immigration enforcement, and deliberate concealment of investigative methods creates a system where constitutional rights—of individuals and businesses alike—can be violated with impunity. Unless Congress, courts, or the public demands accountability, Section 702 may have evolved from a counterterrorism tool into a dragnet for domestic law enforcement, with American businesses caught in the net.
Congress is voting this week on whether to extend a surveillance authority that contains no explicit prohibition on this use, no mandatory disclosure to targets, and no independent oversight body capable of detecting it. The question isn’t whether this could happen. The question is whether it’s already happening—and whether it’s too late to stop it.
