The Department of Homeland Security today cut the ribbon on a major expansion of its U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Cyber Crimes Center in Fairfax, Va., and said the expanded facility will give ICE’s homeland security investigations unit “enhanced operational and training capabilities in order to meet the growing cyber mission of the agency and increasing workload of criminal cases with a cyber-nexus.”

DHS Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the ICE HSI unit is engaged in “combating criminals that use the computer as their weapon, perpetrating crimes ranging from child exploitation to the theft of intellectual property.” ICE Director Sarah Saldana said HSI also targets network intrusions, online theft of export controlled data, the sale of stolen credit card and other personal data, and “other crimes that have transitioned from the physical to the virtual world.”