Immigration and Customs Enforcement has confirmed to Congress that it is using commercial spyware capable of intercepting encrypted messages on target devices. The agency’s top official disclosed the program in a letter to lawmakers last week, framing it as a tool for fentanyl trafficking investigations.

The confirmation matters because it ends years of official ambiguity about whether U.S. domestic law enforcement was deploying the same category of tools — powerful enough to extract data from encrypted apps — that were previously associated with foreign intelligence operations and authoritarian governments.