Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is acquiring new and powerful surveillance tools to identify and monitor people.
Among them are apps that allow federal agents to point a cellphone at someone’s face, potentially identifying them and determining their immigration status in the field, and another that can scan irises. The newly licensed software can provide “access to vast amounts of location-based data,” according to a file on the website of the company that developed it, and ICE recently reactivated a previously frozen contract with a company that makes spyware capable of hacking cellphones.
The federal agency is also intensifying its social media surveillance, with new artificial intelligence-based software contracts, and is considering hiring teams of contractors to work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, scouring various databases and platforms like Facebook and TikTok and creating dossiers on users.
The Trump administration seeks to employ new technologies in its attempt to increase deportations to one million per year, a goal that could be achieved with the help of technologies to identify and locate foreigners subject to deportation.
Some Democratic members of Congress are raising legal concerns about the new technologies and asking questions of ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) that are not being answered. A group of U.S. senators asked ICE to stop using a mobile facial recognition app.
“Americans have the right to walk in public spaces without being surveilled,” said Democratic Sen. Edward Markey of Massachusetts to NPR.
Privacy advocates and civil liberties defenders also warn that these surveillance tools pose a serious threat and claim there is no adequate regulatory framework or oversight to ensure federal agents are using 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 Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy and Technology.
“The goal of this is to build a massive surveillance apparatus that can be used for whatever kind of policing the people in power decide to do,” she said.
Scanning Teenagers’ Faces
The way ICE and Border Patrol agents use these technologies was demonstrated in a video posted on TikTok last month by an account in Aurora, Illinois. The video appears to show a group of masked Border Patrol agents getting 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 identification.
One of the young people, who is filming the incident and does not appear on camera, says he is 16 years old and a U.S. citizen but does not have identification.
“Can you do facial recognition?” one agent asks. Another agent then pulls out a cellphone and points it as if taking a photo. He then asks the young person’s name, and the video ends shortly after.
The person who posted the video did not respond to a message but said in the post’s comments 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 agent used. ICE has a mobile facial recognition app called Mobile Fortify, which uses face images and fingerprints to try to identify people in the field. A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) document states that the app searches for matches in Customs and Border Protection (CBP) databases, including photos taken at U.S. entry and exit points, and can return information such as name, date of birth, alien registration number, possible citizenship status, and “Possible Unlawful Presence.”
In another section of the document, it states that ICE will receive “limited biographical data” if the individual matches a photo from a specific target list called “Fortify the Border Priority Target List,” and that if there is no match, “no additional information will be returned.”
The document also states 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 documentation about its operation were first revealed by 404 Media, which obtained the DHS document through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
This week, the outlet also reported that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has made a different facial recognition app, Mobile Identify, available in the Google app store for state and local law enforcement agencies authorized to work with CBP.
David Bier, immigration studies director at the libertarian Cato Institute, called it a “huge leap forward” that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) can now have agents in the field simply point their phones at someone’s face and instantly obtain information about that person.
“The idea of anonymity in public disappears when the administration or 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 in September for ICE to stop using the technology and respond to questions about its use. ICE did not respond to the questions, and the senators renewed the demand on Monday.
“This kind of on-demand surveillance is frightening and should put us all on alert,” Markey told NPR. “It inhibits free speech and erodes privacy. Ultimately, it 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 not reliable, especially for Black people, and expressed concern that the Trump administration “will use this technology as a weapon against anyone who disagrees with the government.”
Neither ICE nor DHS responded to NPR’s specific questions about mobile facial recognition apps. An ICE spokesperson stated in a statement: “Nothing new here. For years, law enforcement across the country has used technological innovation to combat crime. ICE is no different. The use of various technologies 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 much more, always respecting civil liberties and privacy rights.”
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 oversight frameworks.”
The growing use of facial recognition technology comes as DHS has published a proposed regulation that would expand the agency’s ability to request biometric data from foreigners and their U.S. citizen relatives when they apply to adjust their immigration status, such as obtaining a green card or citizenship. According to the regulation, the agency could request facial images, iris scans, fingerprints and palm prints, voiceprints, and even DNA. The public has until early January to comment on the rule.
Spyware Sent via SMS
In August, the Trump administration reactivated a previously suspended contract with Paragon Solutions, an Israel-founded company that produces spyware. A Paragon tool called Graphite was used in Europe earlier this year to target journalists and civil society members, according to Citizen Lab, a University of Toronto research group specializing in spyware.
Little is known about how ICE is using Paragon Solutions’ technology, and legal groups recently sued the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to obtain records on the contract and tools produced by Cellebrite. ICE did not respond to NPR’s questions about its contract with Paragon Solutions and whether it refers to 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 has essentially full access to your phone,” said Jeramie Scott, senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a legal and public policy group focused on privacy. “It’s an extremely dangerous surveillance technology that really violates the protections of our Fourth Amendment.”
Expanding an Already Robust Surveillance Infrastructure
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been steadily expanding its surveillance capabilities under both Republican and Democratic administrations since its founding after 9/11.
In 2022, a report from Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy and Technology found that ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) could locate three in four adults in the U.S. through utility records and had scanned one-third of American adults’ driver’s license photos.
But Tucker of Georgetown, a co-author of the report, said the situation is more dramatic now because of the Trump administration’s aggressive stance on immigration and its willingness to push legal boundaries.
“Even if there weren’t robust laws and regulations to protect rights, there were some norms that were considered practically inviolable by all presidential administrations until then,” Tucker said about the situation a few years ago. “Not only have the norms disappeared, but this administration is willing to violate all existing laws.”
Source: npr.org by Jude Joffe-Block