Billie Little spent nearly 20 years at Thomson Reuters, valuing the company’s legal research, news and data services. But in early 2026 she and colleagues grew alarmed that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement might be using Thomson Reuters’ investigative product CLEAR in ways that targeted immigrants and protesters.
Little worked in legal publishing and did not operate CLEAR, but she learned the company sells the platform — which aggregates billions of public and proprietary records, social media and data from a network of license plate readers — to law enforcement. ICE held a nearly $5 million contract from May 2025 for license plate reader data described as helping to “enhance investigations for potential arrest, seizure and forfeiture.” Local reports and accounts suggested agents were using vehicle registration information and other data to identify people, sometimes those without criminal histories, and to locate protesters and employees in the Twin Cities.
Worried that the technology could be used unlawfully, Little joined a group of employees calling itself the Committee to Restore Trust. On Feb. 20 the committee sent management a letter signed by about 170 employees at a company of roughly 27,000 worldwide, asking for transparency and an explanation of oversight for contracts with the Department of Homeland Security and ICE. The letter warned the company’s products could raise constitutional and legal concerns in sanctuary jurisdictions and under data protection rules.
Little says management shut off comments on an internal post about the issue and largely stonewalled the committee. Media coverage followed: the Minnesota Star Tribune and The New York Times reported on employee concerns in March. Five days after the Times story, Little says she was called into an HR meeting and informed she was under investigation for violating confidentiality and data-sharing policies; a few days later she was fired. Her lawsuit alleges she was dismissed in retaliation for raising what she reasonably believed were unlawful practices, a retaliation Oregon law forbids. The suit seeks reinstatement, lost wages and compensatory damages and says Little received no written findings or a specific explanation of the alleged code-of-conduct violation.
Thomson Reuters declined to comment on an individual employment matter and said it “strongly dispute[s] the allegations and intends to robustly defend the case.” The company has told reporters that its tools support investigations into national security and public-safety crimes such as child exploitation, human trafficking, narcotics and financial crime, and that it maintains safeguards to ensure products are used according to contracts and the law. The company has also said CLEAR is not intended for mass immigration inquiries or deporting noncriminal undocumented people, and that vehicle registration data should not be used for immigration enforcement.
Privacy and civil-liberties advocates say those safeguards may not be enough. Researchers warn that aggregating vast amounts of data can reveal personal information law enforcement traditionally would need a warrant to obtain. Reporting has found CLEAR integrated with other tools used by ICE, including systems from Palantir and Motorola, potentially widening how data flows into enforcement operations.
Shareholders and activists have pressed the company as well. The British Columbia General Employees’ Union filed a proposal calling for an independent evaluation of whether Thomson Reuters’ products may contribute to adverse human-rights impacts when used by law enforcement and immigration authorities. The company says it commissioned a second human-rights impact assessment in 2025 and will publish key findings later this year; the union counters that assessment predates the 2026 escalation and recent employee complaints.
Some current and former employees in the Twin Cities described fear and frustration, saying coworkers reported being followed, afraid to take their children to school, or fearful at work. Activists monitoring immigration enforcement have filed lawsuits alleging federal agents recorded or used observers’ license-plate information in ways that violated First Amendment rights.
Little frames her lawsuit as more than a personal grievance. “This is about the issues of protecting our privacy, our law enforcement agencies abiding by the Constitution and protecting our civil liberties,” she told NPR, arguing companies that sell powerful aggregated data must ensure it is not used to violate constitutional protections.