It is 9:15 on Monday morning. The office is just coming to life when two U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents walk into the main lobby, flash their badges and casually introduce themselves to the receptionist. Crew cuts. Cargo pants. Guns. These guys are the real deal. But instead of presenting a subpoena or a warrant, the agents request to speak with a company representative about ICE’s Project Shield America outreach effort.
The colorful brochure provided by the ICE agents explains that Project Shield America, led by ICE’s Counter-Proliferation Investigations Unit, is a decades-old outreach and enforcement program designed to thwart illicit exports of licensable items and sensitive technology targeted for procurement by terrorists and rogue nations. The stated goals of Project Shield America are fairly straightforward: prevent rogue nations, terrorist groups and international criminal organizations from obtaining conventional and nonconventional weapons and their components, as well as critical technology that could assist parties acting contrary to U.S. national security interests. Translation: “No U.S. high-tech goodies for bad guys.”
