DHS develops software tool to help fight human smuggling

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate has developed new technology that will assist federal agents in investigating human smuggling.

The data analytics software program, called Igloo, is already in use by select units of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) to investigate these criminal human smuggling networks.

Accurately gauging the number of people who are illegally smuggled into the United States is a difficult task, but some estimates say there are about 350,000 illegal crossings per year — and that’s over the U.S.-Mexican border alone. There are also people smuggled in from other countries, including China.

Criminal organizations reap massive profits from human trafficking and smuggling, drug smuggling, and illegal financial transactions.

To combat this problem, HSI relies on intelligence. However, with the abundance of information available, agencies are faced with a deluge of data that they need help analyzing.

Igloo leverages machine learning algorithms to search databases looking for patterns and anomalies. The Igloo software can quickly cross-reference and cross-correlate data from multiple sources, identifying commonalities and then building a framework for law enforcement to use. In short, Igloo puts good intelligence on these criminal networks into the hands of law enforcement agents’ so they can act on it.

The software is currently in beta testing, but the results so far are promising. In the future, DHS’s Science and Technology Directorate plans to use Igloo for other offices within ICE.