ICE agents have new tools to track and identify people: NPR

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 cellphone at a person’s face to potentially identify them and determine their immigration status in the field, and another that can scan irises. Newly licensed software can provide “access to large amounts of location-based data,” according to an archive of the website of the company that developed it, and 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 monitoring of social media, with new AI-based software contracts, and plans to hire 24/7 teams of contractors tasked with crawling various databases and platforms like Facebook and TikTok and creating dossiers on users.

The Trump administration is seeking to use new technology to try to increase deportations to one million a year, a goal that could be helped by technology to identify and locate noncitizens facing deportation.

Some Democratic members of Congress are raising legal concerns about new technologies and asking ICE questions that remain unanswered. A group of US senators have called on ICE to stop using a facial recognition mobile app.

“Americans have the right to walk in public spaces without being monitored,” Democratic Sen. Edward Markey of Massachusetts told NPR.

Privacy and civil liberties advocates also warn that these surveillance tools pose a serious threat and say there is not a sufficient regulatory or oversight framework to ensure that federal agents use new technologies in a way that protects 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 goal is to build a massive surveillance apparatus that can be used for any type of policing that people in power decide to undertake,” she said.

Scan teenagers’ faces

How ICE and Border Patrol agents use these technologies was featured in a video posted to TikTok last month by an account in Aurora, Illinois. The video appears to show a group of masked Border Patrol agents as they jump out of an SUV and approach two youths on bicycles on the sidewalk near East Aurora High School. The agents ask them for their citizenship and present identification.

One of the young men, who films the incident and does not appear on camera, says he is 16 and a U.S. citizen but does not have identification.

“Can you do a facial?” An officer is heard asking. Another police officer then takes out a cell phone and points at 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 comments on the post that the video was of his cousins. NPR was able to verify where the video was filmed.

It’s unclear which app the officer used. ICE has a mobile facial recognition app called Mobile Fortify that uses images of faces and fingerprints to try to identify people in the field. A Department of Homeland Security document says the app searches Customs and Border Protection databases for matches, including photos taken when people enter and exit the United States, and can return information such as a subject’s name, date of birth, alien number, possible citizenship status and “possible overstay status.”

In another section of the document, it says that ICE will receive “limited biographical data” if the individual matches a photo on a specific list of targets, called the “Fortify the Border Hotlist,” and that non-matches “will not return any additional information.”

It also states that individuals cannot refuse to be photographed and that photos are retained for 15 years, even if there is no match.

The existence of the app and documentation of how it works was first reported by 404 Media, which obtained the document from DHS through a Freedom of Information Act request.

This week, the outlet also reported that Customs and Border Protection had created another facial recognition app, Mobile Identity, available on Google’s app store for state and local law enforcement agencies tasked with working with ICE.

David Bier, director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, called it a “huge step forward” that DHS can now ask agents in the field to simply point their phone at someone’s face and instantly get details about that person.

“The idea of ​​anonymity in public really disappears 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 attend public protests.

A group of Democratic senators, led by Markey, in September called on ICE to stop using the technology and answer questions about its use. ICE did not respond to their questions, and the senators renewed their request Monday.

“This type of on-demand surveillance is distressing and should put us all on guard,” Markey told NPR. “It chills speech and infringes on privacy. It ultimately undermines our democracy.”

In their letter, the senators ask a long list of questions, including the legal basis for using the app, how it was developed, whether U.S. citizens are included in the database of photos the app matches, whether there are policies for its use 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 “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 facial recognition mobile apps.

An ICE spokesperson said in a statement: “Nothing new here. For years, law enforcement agencies across the country have harnessed technological innovation to fight crime. ICE is no different. Employing various forms of technology in support of investigations and law enforcement activities makes it easier to apprehend criminal gang members, child sex offenders, murderers, drug traffickers, identity thieves and more again, while respecting civil liberties and privacy.”

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 the requirements and oversight framework. »

The growing use of facial recognition technology comes as DHS released a proposed rule that would expand the agency’s ability to request biometric data from noncitizens and their U.S. citizen relatives when they apply to change their immigration status, such as to obtain a green card or citizenship. Under the rule, the agency could request facial images, iris scans, fingerprints and palm prints, voice prints and even DNA.

The public has the opportunity to comment on the rule until early January.

Spyware sent via SMS

In August, the Trump administration revived a previously suspended contract with Paragon Solutions, an Israeli company that makes spyware. A Paragon tool called Graphite was used in Europe earlier this year to target journalists and members of civil society, according to The Citizen Lab, a research group based at the University of Toronto that specializes in spyware.

Little is known about how ICE uses Paragon Solutions technology, and legal groups recently sued DHS for records about it and tools made by the Cellebrite company. ICE did not respond to NPR’s questions about its Paragon Solutions contract and whether it involves Graphite or another tool.

Graphite can start monitoring a phone, including encrypted messages, simply by sending a message to the number. The user does not need to click on any link or message.

“It has essentially complete access to your phone,” said Jeramie Scott, senior attorney at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a privacy-focused legal and policy group. “This is extremely dangerous surveillance technology that truly runs counter to our Fourth Amendment protections.”

Adding to an already robust surveillance infrastructure

DHS has continued to expand its surveillance capabilities under Republican and Democratic administrations since its creation in the aftermath of 9/11.

In 2022, a report from the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown Law found that ICE could locate three out of four American adults through government records and had scanned a third of adult Americans’ driver’s license photos.

But Georgetown’s Tucker, co-author of the report, said the situation is now more dire because of the Trump administration’s aggressive stance on immigration enforcement and its willingness to push legal boundaries.

“Even though there were no strong laws and regulations for the protection of rights, there were norms that were not previously considered truly transgressable by all presidential administrations,” Tucker said of the situation a few years ago. “Not only are the standards gone, but this administration is willing to break every law in existence.”

NPR’s Martin Kaste contributed to this report.

Contact Jude Joffe Block via encrypted communication on Signal at JudeJB.10