Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deepened its reliance on Microsoft’s cloud technology last year as the agency ramped up arrest and deportation operations, leaked documents reveal.

ICE more than tripled the amount of data it stored in Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform in the six months leading up to January 2026, a period in which the agency’s budget swelled and its workforce rapidly expanded, according to the files.

ICE appears to be using a range of Microsoft’s productivity tools, as well as AI-driven products, to search and analyse the data it holds in Azure. Files suggest some of the agency’s own tools and systems may also be running on Microsoft servers.

The documents – obtained by the Guardian and its partners +972 Magazine and Local Call – raise questions about whether Microsoft technology is facilitating an immigration crackdown by an agency accused of conducting unlawful operations and using excessive force on a large scale.

ICE enforcement operations have surged over the past year as part of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign. The agency is now at the centre of a battle in Congress over its funding, sparked by the deaths of two people in Minneapolis, that has led to a partial shutdown of the US government.

In July, ICE received a $75bn budget increase, making it the highest-funded US law enforcement body. With this unprecedented increase in funds, the agency has embarked on a spending spree on technology, awarding contracts to large firms such as Palantir alongside lesser-known providers.

ICE, which has been likened to a domestic surveillance agency, enjoys access to vast troves of data on people living in the US. It has a growing arsenal of surveillance technology, including facial recognition apps, phone location databases, drones, and invasive spyware.

As the agency expanded through 2025, it boosted spending on cloud computing. Amazon and Microsoft, both longtime providers to ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), have emerged as beneficiaries of deals worth tens of millions of dollars struck by third-party resellers.

The leaked documents do not specify the kinds of information stored by ICE on Microsoft servers. However, they indicate the agency has used Azure services including “blob storage” of raw data, as well as AI tools that analyse images and videos, and translate text.

In January, according to the files, ICE held almost 1,400 terabytes in Azure, which if only comprised of photographs would be equivalent to approximately 490m images. This was up from 400 terabytes in July 2025 after climbing through the second half of last year, files suggest.

ICE is also using virtual machines on Azure, according to the documents. These are effectively computers that run in the cloud but that can be accessed remotely. ICE appears to be renting these high-powered computers to run software.

The agency, which has more than doubled its workforce since January 2025, is also understood to have significantly expanded its access to Microsoft’s suite of productivity apps which provide users with access to document management tools and an AI chatbot.

It’s unclear from the files whether ICE is using Azure to store or analyse information collected through any of its surveillance or intelligence gathering activities, or whether the cloud platform supports other functions, such as the running of detention centres or deportation flights. ICE did not respond to a request for comment.

A spokesperson for Microsoft said it “provides cloud-based productivity and collaboration tools to DHS and ICE, delivered through our key partners”. They said Microsoft’s policies and terms of service “do not allow our technology to be used for the mass surveillance of civilians, and we do not believe ICE is engaged in such activity”.

The spokesperson added: “There are currently many public issues relating to immigration enforcement, and we believe Congress, the executive branch, and the courts have the opportunity to draw clear legal lines regarding the allowable use of emerging technologies by law enforcement.”

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According to Microsoft sources, several employees have in recent months raised concerns internally about ICE’s use of the company’s technology, including by filing internal ethics reports.

In December 2025, the company responded to one such report by stating that it does not have any current contracts that “support immigration enforcement”. The company later appeared to narrow this position. It acknowledged to employees it has contracts with ICE and DHS, but said it “does not presently maintain AI services contracts tied specifically to enforcement activities”.

Microsoft is not alone in facing disquiet among employees over its business with federal immigration authorities. For large US tech groups, ICE and sister agency Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have long been customers, but have become increasingly controversial for their aggressive tactics and involvement in fatal shootings.

Last week, Amazon workers and activists protested outside the company’s Seattle headquarters, demanding the company cut ties with federal immigration agencies. The company benefits from a series of large cloud deals with DHS to provide cloud infrastructure to ICE and CBP.

At Google, which provides cloud services to both agencies, more than 1,300 workers have signed a recent petition with a similar set of demands. “DHS is violating civil and national law as well as civil and human rights,” the petition reads. “We must end our complicity in powering them.”

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Tricia McLaughlin, the Department of Homeland Security’s top spokesperson and one of the most visible defenders of the Trump administration’s deportation raids, is leaving the agency in the coming week, the department confirmed.

McLaughlin’s impending exit, comes at one of the most fraught moments in the department’s history. Public support for the administration’s immigration enforcement push has fallen to its lowest point since Trump took office, after a series of violent confrontations in US cities and the fatal shootings of two US citizens – Alex Pretti and Renee Good – by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis.

Those killings are at the center of articles of impeachment filed by House Democrats against Kristi Noem, the US homeland security secretary, , accusing her of violating public trust and obstructing congressional oversight.

The 31-year-old was originally planning to leave her post in December, but stayed on because of the shooting deaths, according to the department. Her departure was first reported by Politico.

Following Good’s killing, she wrote in a DHS press release: “Dangerous criminals – whether they be illegal aliens or US citizens – are assaulting law enforcement and turning their vehicles into weapons to attack law enforcement.”

After Pretti was shot dead, she spun it to the Guardian that he “violently resisted” and officers fired “defensive shots” in return.

McLaughlin also faces separate allegations of financial self-dealing. Federal Communications Commission documents obtained by Public Citizen list her as the DHS point person for a $220m agency advertising campaign, portions of which went to an ad firm run by her husband, Ben Yoho. The alleged conflict is cited explicitly in the impeachment articles against Noem.

Before those controversies came to light, McLaughlin had long been a combative and prominent presence in the DHS press operation, regularly attacking critics of the DHS’s immigration enforcement actions.

In the summer of 2025, she accused Democrats and journalists of using “violent rhetoric” that she said was fueling a rise in assaults on DHS and ICE agents.

McLaughlin served in the first Trump administration at the state department and treasury before becoming political communications director for the Ohio governor, Mike DeWine, and, most recently, senior adviser to Vivek Ramaswamy’s 2024 presidential campaign.

Last month, a former DHS communications official, David Lapan, told the Columbia Journalism Review: “What Tricia McLaughlin is doing at Homeland Security is unlike anything I’ve ever seen in my government service. I’ve never seen it as adversarial as this.”

Her deputy, Lauren Bis, will be promoted to replace her as assistant secretary for public affairs, according to Axios.

Political leaders have celebrated Jesse Jackson as a “titan” of the civil rights movement and “one of America’s greatest patriots” after the announcement on Tuesday of his death at the age of 84.

The former US president Joe Biden said history would remember Jackson as “a man of God and of the people”, calling him in a post on X: “Determined and tenacious. Unafraid of the work to redeem the soul of our Nation.”

Biden added: “I’ve seen how Reverend Jackson has helped lead our Nation forward through tumult and triumph. He’s done it with optimism, and a relentless insistence on what is right and just.

“Reverend Jackson influenced generations of Americans, and countless elected leaders, including Presidents. Reverend Jackson believed in his bones the promise of America: that we are all created equal in the image of God and deserve to be treated equally throughout our lives.

“While we’ve never fully lived up to that promise, he dedicated his life to ensuring we never fully walked away from it either.”

Bill Clinton, another Democratic former president, said he and former first lady Hillary Clinton were friends with Jackson for more than five decades, and were “deeply saddened” by his passing.

“Reverend Jackson championed human dignity and helped create opportunities for countless people to live better lives,” he said in a statement on X.

“[He] never stopped working for a better America with brighter tomorrows, including his historic campaigns for the presidency in 1984 and 1988 in which he championed the concerns of Black, Latino, Asian, and lower income white Americans.

“Hillary and I loved him very much.”

Al Sharpton, the veteran civil rights campaigner with whom Jackson worked closely after the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr, called his friend and mentor “a consequential and transformative leader who changed this nation and the world”.

In a social media post on Tuesday, Sharpton wrote: “He shaped public policy and changed laws. He kept the dream alive and taught young children from broken homes, like me, that we don’t have broken spirits.”

Senior Democrats, the party for which Jackson campaigned twice as a presidential candidate, were also quick to pay tribute.

“He let us know our voices mattered. He instilled in us that we were somebody. And he widened the path for generations to follow in his footsteps and lead,” Kamala Harris, the first Black US vice-president, write in a post on X, also calling Jackson “one of America’s greatest patriots”.

Recalling her days as a young law student in Oakland, California, Harris recalled having a “Jesse Jackson for President” sticker on her car.

“As I would drive across the Bay Bridge, you would not believe how people from every walk of life would give me a thumbs up or honk of support,” she said.

“They were small interactions, but they exemplified Reverend Jackson’s life work – lifting up the dignity of working people, building community and coalitions, and strengthening our democracy and nation.”

Jackson, she said, was “a selfless leader, mentor, and friend to me and so many others”.

Other Democrats celebrated Jackson’s stature in the civil rights movement.

“America has lost a titan in the struggle for civil rights and racial justice. From his days at the side of Dr King, to his moral leadership in this century, Rev Jesse Jackson Sr spent his life pushing our nation closer to its own ideal,” Pete Buttigieg, transportation secretary during the Biden administration, said.

The Democratic Georgia senator Raphael Warnock said America had lost “one of its great moral voices”.

In a social media post he wrote: “With an eloquence and rhythmic rhetoric all his own, Jesse Jackson reminded America that equal justice is not inevitable; it requires vigilance and commitment, and for freedom fighters, sacrifice.

“His ministry was poetry and spiritual power in the public square. He advanced King’s dream and bent the arc of history closer to justice.”

Stacey Abrams, another prominent Black Georgia Democrat and a voting rights advocate, said Jackson “understood the immense promise of America and his role in shaping its destiny”.

“With courage, tenacity and an audacious spirit, he widened our capacity for imagining true unity and deepened our commitment to justice for all. I was one of the lucky beneficiaries of a vision he never forsook. God bless him and the Jackson family,” she wrote.

Bernice King, daughter of Martin Luther King Jr, gave thanks for a life she said “pushed hope into weary places”.

In a post on X, King wrote: “Rev Jesse Jackson Sr devoted his life to lifting people in poverty, the marginalized, and those pushed to society’s edges. He pushed barriers and opened doors so Black people and other excluded communities could step into opportunity and dignity.

“With the Rainbow Coalition, he cast a bold vision of an inclusive society – uniting people across race, class, and faith to build power together and expand the table of economic opportunity. He was a gifted negotiator and a courageous bridge‑builder, serving humanity by bringing calm into tense rooms and creating pathways where none existed.”

King said her family shared “a long and meaningful history with him, rooted in a shared commitment to justice and love”.

Donald Trump, in a post on his own Truth Social network, called Jackson “a good man” and a “friend”, also claiming to have provided office space in New York for his Rainbow Push Coalition.

Trump’s post, as is often the case, quickly turned political, and about himself. The president attacked the “scoundrels and Lunatics on the Radical Left” who, he said, “falsely and consistently” called him a racist, and sought recognition for “funding Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), which Jesse loved”.

Trump also took a swing at a familiar political foe, former president Barack Obama, whom, he claimed, Jackson “could not stand”.