The Department of Homeland Security has outlined plans to provide local police working on its behalf with a mobile facial recognition app for identifying immigrants, according to a newly revealed federal document.
The document, a Privacy Threshold Analysis first reported by 404 Media, describes a tool called the ICE Task Force Module. The app allows local police to scan a person’s face and compare it against more than 250 million government records, including State Department visa records and Transportation Security Administration traveler verification data.
Once a scan is conducted, the app instructs the officer to “not detain or arrest” or provides a reference code to obtain more information from ICE, the document states. Photos captured through the app are stored in an internal DHS system for 15 years.
DHS declined to provide further details about the app. In a statement, the agency said ICE is “committed to ensuring that the local police who partner with them have the tools needed to support ICE’s mass deportation mission.”
The local officers referenced in the document as “ICE non-federal law enforcement officers” are likely participants in the federal 287(g) program, specifically the Task Force Model, which authorizes local police to arrest immigrants on ICE’s behalf during routine duties. Approximately 1,300 police agencies participate in the Task Force Model nationwide.
The document says the app launched last September, suggesting it is already in use. It appears to function similarly to Mobile Fortify, an existing facial recognition app used by ICE and Customs and Border Protection, though it remains unclear whether it uses the same technology.
Clare Garvie, deputy director of the Technology Law and Policy Program at New York University School of Law’s Policing Project, said the document raises more questions than it answers. “It’s unclear to me whether a pre-existing stop based on some level of suspicion is required before law enforcement can use this app,” she said. “Can they walk around taking photos of whoever as sort of a dragnet way to attempt to identify individuals who might be in the country unlawfully?”
Privacy experts told NPR that extending facial recognition to local police could have a chilling effect on free speech, as people may fear repercussions for attending protests or observing ICE activity.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin acknowledged at a congressional hearing this month that the agency has used facial recognition technology on protesters and identified people who attended protests in Oregon who were also at recent demonstrations outside the Delaney Hall Detention Facility in Newark, New Jersey.
Garvie noted that facial recognition technology is not always accurate and that ICE has detained people wrongly identified by the technology.
Patrick Eddington, a senior fellow in homeland security and civil liberties at the Cato Institute, said deploying the technology at the local level magnifies its potential problems. “This kind of technology which can impact individual rights, when it’s scaled, it can have potentially very, very large effects affecting lots and lots of people,” he said. “It’s like a Bill of Rights disaster pretty much waiting to happen.”
In a statement, DHS said its law enforcement methods are constitutional. “Like other law enforcement agencies, ICE employs various forms of technology to investigate criminal activity and support law enforcement efforts while respecting civil liberties and privacy interests,” the statement said.
Eddington said U.S. citizens will be caught up in the surveillance because officers conducting immigration enforcement will not know a person’s citizenship status before scanning them. The DHS document acknowledges that “a photo taken by an ICE non-federal law enforcement officer using the TFM mobile application could be that of someone other than a removable individual, including U.S. citizens.” Photos are retained for 15 years.
The administration has repeatedly denied maintaining a database of protesters, despite instances where federal agents told community members their photos would go into a database of “domestic terrorists.” Earlier this month, NPR reported on a letter in which former acting ICE Director Todd Lyons indicated the agency gives itself wide latitude to collect information on people its officers encounter.
Cooper Quintin, a senior staff technologist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the app would not function without databases to draw from. “They’re playing semantics,” he said. “They’re certainly not being forthright. You know, do they have a database of protesters? Maybe they don’t call it that.”
Describing the app as a significant expansion of ICE’s surveillance capabilities, Quintin said, “It makes this sort of face surveillance ubiquitous on American streets. I don’t think that Americans should tolerate law enforcement being able to scan anyone’s face at any time for any reason to try to determine their identity. This is the new form of ‘papers, please.’”