The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is acquiring powerful new surveillance tools to identify and monitor people.
They include apps that allow federal agents to point a cell phone at someone’s face to potentially identify them and determine their immigration status on the spot, and another that can scan irises. A newly licensed software can provide “access to vast amounts of location-based data,” according to a file from the website of the company that developed it, and the ICE recently revived a previously frozen contract with a company that makes spyware capable of hacking cell phones.
The federal agency is also ramping up its social media surveillance, with new AI-powered software contracts, and is considering hiring 24/7 contractor teams tasked with scouring various databases and platforms like Facebook and TikTok to create dossiers on users.
The Trump administration seeks to deploy new technology while trying to increase deportations to a million per year, a goal that could be aided by technology to identify and locate non-citizens subject to removal.
Some Democratic members of Congress are raising legal concerns about the new technologies and asking questions of the ICE that are not being answered. A group of U.S. senators asked the ICE to stop using a mobile facial recognition app.
“Americans have the right to walk in public spaces without being surveilled,” Democratic Sen. Edward Markey of Mass. told NPR.
Privacy advocates and civil liberties defenders also warn that these surveillance tools pose a serious threat and say there is no sufficient regulatory framework or oversight to ensure that federal agents use the new technologies in ways that protect privacy and constitutional rights.
“Immigration powers are being used to justify mass surveillance of everyone,” said Emily Tucker, executive director of the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown Law.
“The purpose of this is to build a huge surveillance apparatus that can be used for whatever kind of policing the people in power decide to undertake,” she said.
Scanning Teens’ Faces
The way ICE and Border Patrol agents use these technologies was on display in a video posted on TikTok last month by an account in Aurora, Ill. The video appears to show a group of masked Border Patrol agents jumping out of an SUV and approaching two young people on bicycles on the sidewalk near East Aurora High School. The agents ask about their citizenship and request to see ID.
One of the young people, who is filming the incident and does not appear on camera, says they are 16 years old and a U.S. citizen but does not have ID.
“Can you do facial?” an officer is heard asking. Another officer then pulls out a cell phone and points it as if taking a photo. He then asks the young person’s name and the video ends shortly after that.
The person who posted the video did not respond to a message but said in comments on the post that the video was of their cousins. NPR was able to verify the location where the video was recorded.
It is unclear which app the officer used. The ICE has a mobile facial recognition app known as Mobile Fortify that uses face images and fingerprints of people to try to identify them on the spot. A Department of Homeland Security document says the app searches for matches against Customs and Border Protection databases, including photos taken when people enter and exit the U.S., and can return information such as the subject’s name, date of birth, alien number, possible citizenship status, and “Possible Overstay Status”.
In another section of the document, it says that the ICE will receive “limited biographic data” if the individual matches a photo from a specific target list called “Fortify the Border Hotlist,” and non-matches “will not return any additional information”.
It also says that individuals cannot refuse to be photographed, and that the photos are stored for 15 years, even if there is no match.
The existence of the app and the documentation on how it works were first reported by 404 Media, which obtained the DHS document through a Freedom of Information Act request.
This week, the outlet also reported that Customs and Border Protection has made a different facial recognition app, Mobile Identify, available in the Google app store for state and local law enforcement agencies that are deputized to work with it. David Bier, immigration studies director at the libertarian Cato Institute, called this a “huge leap” that the DHS can now have agents on the scene simply pointing the phone at someone’s face and instantly getting details about them.
“The whole idea of anonymity in public, it’s really gone when the administration or the government can immediately identify who you are,” Bier said, adding that this technology could have a chilling effect on people’s willingness to participate in public protests.
A group of Democratic senators, led by Markey, asked the ICE in September to stop using the technology and answer questions about its use. The ICE did not respond to their questions, and the senators renewed their demand on Monday.
“This kind of on-demand surveillance is terrifying and should put us all on alert,” Markey told NPR. “It inhibits speech and erodes privacy. It ultimately undermines our democracy.”
In their letter, the senators list a long series of questions, including the legal basis for using the app, how it was developed, whether U.S. citizens are included in the photo database the app compares against, whether there are policies for using it to identify U.S. citizens, and whether it has been used to identify protesters and minors.
Markey told NPR that facial recognition is unreliable, especially for people of color, and expressed concern that the Trump administration would “weaponize that technology against anyone who disagrees with the government.”
Neither the ICE nor the DHS responded to NPR’s specific questions about mobile facial recognition apps.
An ICE spokesperson said in a statement: “Nothing new here. For years, law enforcement across the country has leveraged technological innovations to combat crime. ICE is no different. Employing various forms of technology in support of investigations and law enforcement activities helps in the arrest of criminal gang members, child sex abusers, murderers, drug traffickers, identity thieves, and more, all while respecting civil liberties and privacy interests.”
The DHS sent a statement saying: “While the Department does not discuss specific vendors or operational tools, any technology used by DHS Components must comply with requirements and the oversight framework.”
The growing use of facial recognition technology comes as the DHS published a proposed rule that would expand the agency’s ability to request biometric data from non-citizens and their U.S. citizen relatives when they apply to adjust their immigration status, such as for a green card or citizenship. Under the rule, the agency could request facial images, iris scans, fingerprints and palm prints, voiceprints, and even DNA.
The public has an opportunity to comment on the rule until early January.
Text-Delivered Spyware
In August, the Trump administration revived a previously paused contract with Paragon Solutions, an Israel-founded company that makes spyware. A Paragon tool called Graphite was used in Europe earlier this year to target journalists and civil society members, according to The Citizen Lab, a University of Toronto-based research group with expertise in spyware.
Little is known about how the ICE is using Paragon Solutions technology, and legal groups recently sued the DHS for records on it and tools made by Cellebrite. The ICE did not respond to NPR’s questions about its contract with Paragon Solutions and whether it is for Graphite or another tool.
Graphite can begin monitoring a phone—including encrypted messages—simply by sending a message to the number. The user does not need to click a link or message.
“It essentially has full access to your phone,” said Jeramie Scott, senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a legal and policy group focused on privacy. “It’s an extremely dangerous surveillance technology that really goes against our Fourth Amendment protections.”
Adding to an Already Robust Surveillance Infrastructure
The DHS has continuously expanded its surveillance capabilities under both Republican and Democratic administrations since its founding after 9/11.
In 2022, a report from the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown Law found that the ICE could locate three in four U.S. adults through utility records and had scanned driver’s license photos of one-third of American adults.
But Tucker of Georgetown, who co-authored the report, said the situation is more dramatic now because of the Trump administration’s aggressive stance on immigration enforcement and willingness to push legal boundaries.
“Even if there weren’t robust laws and regulations to protect rights, there were some norms that were seen as basically not really transgressible by basically all presidential administrations up to that point,” Tucker said about the situation a few years ago. “Not only have the norms disappeared, but this administration is willing to break any laws that exist.”
Source: npr.org by Jude Joffe-Block