Over the last 20 years, the Department of Homeland Security has turned the surveillance and policing of our cities into a $28 billion project, pouring federal “counterterrorism” grant funds into policing and surveillance technologies that militarize our communities while enriching some of the biggest tech companies, a new report: DHS Open for Business: How Tech Corporations Bring the War on Terror to Our Neighborhoods reveals. 

The report, co-written by the Action Center on Race & the Economy, LittleSis, MediaJustice, and the Surveillance, Tech, and Immigration Policing Project at the Immigrant Defense Project, reveals how DHS counterterrorism grant funding, like the Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI), and the corporations which advocate for it drive demand for “homeland security” and bring the War on Terror to our neighborhoods. 

The research found that DHS fueled a massive influx of money into surveillance and policing in our cities, under a banner of emergency response and counterterrorism—and with the support of its corporate partners like Microsoft, LexisNexis, ShotSpotter, Palantir, and Motorola Solutions. 

Over the last twenty years, the President’s Budget for DHS ballooned from $19.5 billion in 2002 to almost $100 billion in 2023, channeling much of these funds to corporations. The report findings are focused on four cities—Los Angeles, Boston, New York City, and Chicago—documenting how UASI grants intensify local policing and benefit the multi-billion-dollar corporations who advocate for funding DHS.

To learn more about these DHS grants and what we can do about them, read DHS Open for Business: How Tech Corporations Bring the War on Terror to Our Neighborhoods and join the co-authors TODAY on Twitter for a live conversation at 1pm ET.