By Nick Valencia | February 22,/ 2026
EL PASO, TEXAS— A review of social-media footage, FOIA released system logs, procurement documents, and local government records suggests that Walmart, the country’s largest retailer, has quietly become a key private-sector contributor to the surveillance infrastructure that enables operations by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Not by conducting raids. Not by issuing policy statements. But by helping finance and normalize the technology that makes large-scale tracking possible.
As ICE has increasingly relied on data-driven enforcement, particularly Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) systems, it has accessed vast pools of vehicle data through local police departments.
One of the fastest-growing vendors in that space is Flock Safety, whose cameras capture license plates and vehicle metadata in real time. The data is searchable across participating agencies, often through regional or national information-sharing agreements.
ICE does not need to own the cameras. It simply needs access.
Through partnerships with local law enforcement, federal immigration agents are often able to query ALPR databases populated by systems deployed at and around retail corridors, including Walmart locations.
Public records show that Walmart has directly supported the deployment of these systems in multiple cities through grants and donations to local police departments.
In 2023, a memorandum from the Waxahachie, Texas, Chief of Police stated that the department received two Flock Safety cameras “by way of a generous grant from Walmart Inc.”
In Naperville, Illinois, Walmart awarded the police department $1,750 through its community grant program to help cover the cost of installing a Flock camera at a Walmart location.
In Coffeyville, Kansas, Walmart provided $5,000 to support the department’s use of the technology.
A May 2025 motion from the City of Belvidere, Illinois, called for approval of a $5,000 Walmart grant for the purchase of Flock cameras.
Individually, the amounts are modest.
Systemically, they are catalytic.
The Public–Private Pipeline
The structure that emerges is not dramatic. It is procedural. Walmart funds the grants for the local surveillance infrastructure. Local police integrate into shared ALPR networks. Federal agencies gain searchable access through existing agreements.
The architecture is legal. It is decentralized, and it is largely invisible to the communities being monitored.
In late 2025, Flock expanded further into retail security, launching its “Drone as Automated Security” system — a private-sector iteration of its “Drone as First Responder” platform used by police departments. Flock has publicly stated that its customer base includes four of the top 10 retailers ranked by the National Retail Federation. Walmart consistently ranks as the number-one retailer in NRF listings.
The implication is not that Walmart is directing immigration policy. It is that the country’s largest retailer is helping scale a surveillance ecosystem increasingly intertwined with immigration enforcement.
Keeping Them Honest
Shareholders have begun targeting major retailers with proposals demanding greater transparency about how their operations intersect with Trump-era immigration policies.
Recently, Zevin Asset Management led a shareholder proposal urging Home Depot to issue a report detailing its relationship with Flock Safety. The proposal followed reporting by 404Media that ICE has worked with local law enforcement to access Flock’s license-plate data, facilitating immigration raids.
The 404Media investigation analyzed data from Flock cameras deployed in more than 5,000 communities across the United States. It found that local police departments had conducted searches in Flock’s AI-enabled ALPR system using “immigration” as a query term and in connection with ICE-related investigations.
The practice effectively provides federal immigration authorities indirect access to a surveillance system for which ICE does not appear to hold a formal, direct contract.
The enforcement power, in other words, may not reside in who buys the technology, but in who can search it.
A Corporate Retreat, A Surveillance Expansion
Walmart’s financial support of this surveillance infrastructure comes as the company has retreated from earlier public commitments to diversity and social-justice initiatives made in the aftermath of the 2020 racial-justice protests.
At the height of that moment, corporate America pledged accountability.
Today, the conversation has shifted toward operational efficiency and risk mitigation.
Walmart does not set immigration policy.
It does not carry out raids.
But in a data-driven enforcement environment, where plate scans, cross-referenced logs, and AI alerts guide field operations, the entities that finance and normalize surveillance infrastructure become part of the enforcement ecosystem — whether they intend to or not.
Walmart was contacted by NVN for comment regarding its financial support of Flock deployments and whether the company has assessed how those systems may be accessed by federal immigration authorities.
Over the course of two days, and after being given a deadline of end of business next day, a global PR spokesperson for Walmart called NVN at 4:45 p.m. EST to decline to comment.
The spokesperson referred any further questions about grants to the specific police departments who received them.
The Walmart spokesperson added on background that they do not collaborate with ICE.
Enforcement Without Optics
The shift from visible force to invisible tracking represents a fundamental evolution in American immigration enforcement.
You no longer need a checkpoint when you have a database.
You no longer need to canvass a neighborhood when you can query a plate.
When cameras are mounted in the parking lots of everyday retail stores where families visit weekly, the boundary between commerce and state power blurs.
The debate now confronting corporate America is not about ideology.
It is about infrastructure.
Because once a surveillance network is built, financed, installed, and interconnected, the question is rarely whether it will be used.
