You Can't Refuse To Be Scanned by ICE's Facial Recognition App, DHS Document Says
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Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) does not let people decline to be scanned by its new facial recognition app, which the agency uses to verify a person’s identity and their immigration status, according to an internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) document obtained by 404 Media. The document also says any face photos taken by the app, called Mobile Fortify, will be stored for 15 years, including those of U.S. citizens.
The document provides new details about the technology behind Mobile Fortify, how the data it collects is processed and stored, and DHS’s rationale for using it. On Wednesday 404 Media reported that both ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are scanning peoples’ faces in the streets to verify citizenship.
“ICE does not provide the opportunity for individuals to decline or consent to the collection and use of biometric data/photograph collection,” the document, called a Privacy Threshold Analysis (PTA), says. A PTA is a document that DHS creates in the process of deploying new technology or updating existing capabilities. It is supposed to be used by DHS’s internal privacy offices to determine and describe the privacy risks of a certain piece of tech.
“CBP and ICE Privacy are jointly submitting this new mobile app PTA for the ICE Mobile Fortify Mobile App (Mobile Fortify app), a mobile application developed by CBP and made accessible to ICE agents and officers operating in the field,” the document, dated February, reads. 404 Media obtained the document (which you can see here) via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with CBP.
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Do you know anything else about Mobile Fortify or any of the other tools ICE and CBP are using? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at joseph.404 or send me an email at joseph@404media.co.
The document says CBP is supporting ICE as a “technical service provider” to carry out requirements in President Trump’s executive order “Protecting the American People Against Invasion.” After an ICE agent takes a photo of a subject using their work-issued Android or iOS device, the tool queries a wide range of CBP and other databases, including CBP’s Traveler Verification Service. For that system CBP takes photos of peoples’ faces when they enter the U.S. 404 Media previously revealed the app runs images against a bank of 200 million images, then pulls up information such as their name, date of birth, nationality, alien number (a unique identifier the government gives to non-citizens), and whether a judge has ordered they should be deported.
“The photograph shown [...] is the photograph that was taken during the individual’s most recent encounter with CBP, however the matching will be against all pictures CBP may maintain on the individual,” the new document continues. The app can also scan peoples’ fingerprints and provide information based on those, and uploads location data “so ICE can identify where the encounter took place.”
“Although the intended purpose of the Mobile Fortify Application is to identify aliens who are removable from the United States, users may use Mobile Fortify to collect information in identifiable form about individuals regardless of citizenship or immigration status. It is conceivable that a photo taken by an agent using the Mobile Fortify mobile application could be that of someone other than an alien, including U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents,” the document continues. “ICE agents do not know an individual’s citizenship at the time of initial encounter and will use the Mobile Fortify mobile application to determine or verify the individual's identity, and confirm that they are a match to the Fortify the Border Hotlist.” If a subject’s photo doesn’t match one of those on the hotlist, no additional information will be returned, according to the document.
Even if the photo does not provide a match, “CBP saves the new photographs and fingerprints, taken using Mobile Fortify [...] and retained for 15 years,” the document says. “ICE will take no action on individuals who are not a match to the hotlist, unless operational circumstances indicate other violations of law.”
On Wednesday, ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee Bennie G. Thompson told 404 Media in a statement that ICE will prioritize the results of the app over birth certificates. “ICE officials have told us that an apparent biometric match by Mobile Fortify is a ‘definitive’ determination of a person’s status and that an ICE officer may ignore evidence of American citizenship—including a birth certificate—if the app says the person is an alien,” he said. “ICE using a mobile biometrics app in ways its developers at CBP never intended or tested is a frightening, repugnant, and unconstitutional attack on Americans’ rights and freedoms.”
The document says that access to the Mobile Fortify app is limited to ICE agents and officers, some CBP administrative users, and “select CBP Officers that are assisting with removal operations.” Since the document’s creation, the government has diverted tens of thousands of officers from their jobs to assist ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) division, according to data obtained by the Cato Institute. That includes hundreds from various components of CBP, such as Border Patrol.
The Trump administration is making dramatic changes to ICE leadership, with plans to replace senior leaders with officials from Border Patrol, part of CBP, multiple news outlets reported. CBP has been leading the aggressive crackdown in cities like Chicago, including rappelling from Black Hawk helicopters. In response to a video showing Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino throwing tear gas into a crowd, a judge ordered the official to meet with her daily to provide details on who has been arrested for non-immigration-related reasons.
DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“By using the Mobile Fortify app to provide real-time responses to biometric queries, ICE officers and agents can reduce the time and effort to identify targets compared to existing manual processes,” the document says.
Judge orders Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino to meet with her daily, inform her of non-immigration arrests in Chicago
A federal judge in Chicago has ordered Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino to meet with her daily in person after numerous alleged violations of a use of force restraining order.Sabrina Franza (CBS Chicago)
ICE and CBP Agents Are Scanning Peoples’ Faces on the Street To Verify Citizenship
“You don’t got no ID?” a Border Patrol agent in a baseball cap, sunglasses, and neck gaiter asks a kid on a bike. The officer and three others had just stopped the two young men on their bikes during the day in what a video documenting the incident says is Chicago. One of the boys is filming the encounter on his phone. He says in the video he was born here, meaning he would be an American citizen.When the boy says he doesn’t have ID on him, the Border Patrol officer has an alternative. He calls over to one of the other officers, “can you do facial?” The second officer then approaches the boy, gets him to turn around to face the sun, and points his own phone camera directly at him, hovering it over the boy’s face for a couple seconds. The officer then looks at his phone’s screen and asks for the boy to verify his name. The video stops.
In another video of a different incident, this time filmed from the perspective of a driver that authorities have also apparently stopped in Chicago, a group of ICE officers surround the driver side window. One of the officers, wearing a vest from Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO), tells one of his coworkers the driver is refusing to be ID’d. The second ICE official then points his own phone camera at the driver.
“I’m an American citizen so leave me alone,” the driver says.
“Alright, we just got to verify that,” one of the officers says, with some of the group peering at the phone. The officer with the phone points the camera at the driver again, and asks him to remove his hat. “If you could take your hat off, it would be a lot quicker,” the ICE officer says. “I’m going to run your information.”
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Do you have any more videos of ICE or CBP using facial recognition? Do you work at those agencies or know more about Mobile Fortify? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at joseph.404 or send me an email at joseph@404media.co.These videos and others reviewed by 404 Media show that ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are actively using smartphone facial recognition technology in the field, including in stops that seem to have little justification beyond the color of someone’s skin, to then look up more information on that person, including their identity and potentially their immigration status. It is not clear which specific app the officers in the videos are using. 404 Media previously revealed ICE has a new app called Mobile Fortify, which scans someone’s face and is built on a database of 200 million images. The app queries an unprecedented number of government databases to return the subject’s name, date of birth, alien number, and whether they’ve been given an order of deportation.
The videos are evidence that the more high tech ambitions of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign are now a reality. While many ICE operations have been distinctly lowtech, such as simply targeting brown people at a Home Depot parking lot, it is now clear that ICE’s investment in facial recognition technology is an option for officers who are pulling people over or targeting them.
“From these videos it seems like ICE has started using live face recognition in the field,” Allison McDonald, assistant professor of computing & data science at Boston University, told 404 Media in an email. McDonald previously worked on a Georgetown Law, Center on Privacy & Technology report into ICE’s data-driven deportation strategy.
A screenshot of one of the videos, via X.
“The growing use of face recognition by ICE shows us two things: that we should have banned government use of face recognition when we had the chance because it is dangerous, invasive, and an inherent threat to civil liberties and that any remaining pretense that ICE is harassing and surveilling people in any kind of ‘precise’ way should be left in the dust,” Matthew Guariglia, senior policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), told 404 Media in an email.404 Media has seen several videos across social media that appear to show immigration authorities using facial recognition technology. Often the videos include little context beyond what is happening directly in front of the camera, but do sometimes include officials making explicit references to the technology, like with the Border Patrol officer who asked “can you do facial?”
In another video from earlier this year filmed in New Mexico, a group of ICE and Border Patrol agents stand on and near a porch. “Technology, man, huh,” one of the two subjects the agents are surrounding says. One of the Border Patrol agents looks at their phone, while another walks up and squarely points their phone’s camera at another subject’s face. For a brief moment the video shows the officer has the camera app, or another app using the camera, open.
The caption of the video claims “After conducting a search and subsequently arresting individuals at a local horse training facility, authorities then went to nearby residences for further searches and citizenship verification. Identifications were verified utilizing biometrics (facial recognition).”
A local news report about the incident quotes Efren Aguilar Jr., a resident of the property and a U.S. citizen, as saying “They asked if we lived here, we said ‘yes.’ They asked for documentation and if we were U.S. citizens, and we said ‘yes.’ And then they wanted us to let them go into our house, that’s when we refused.” Aguilar told the local media outlet that other colleagues were arrested.
A screenshot of one of the videos, via Instagram.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) declined to comment on ICE’s use of facial recognition technology, with its statement saying “DHS is not going to confirm or deny law enforcement capabilities or methods.” CBP, meanwhile, confirmed it is using Mobile Fortify. “CBP relies on a variety of technological capabilities that enhance the effectiveness of agents on the ground. This is one of many tools we are using as we enforce the laws of our nation,” a CBP spokesperson said in an email.404 Media first revealed the existence of Mobile Fortify in June based on leaked emails. The underlying system used for the facial recognition part of the app is ordinarily used when people enter or exit the U.S. The emails showed the app is also capable of scanning a subject’s fingerprints. “The Mobile Fortify App empowers users with real-time biometric identity verification capabilities utilizing contactless fingerprints and facial images captured by the camera on an ICE issued cell phone without a secondary collection device,” one of the emails said. The explicit goal of the app is to let ICE officers identify people in the field, according to the emails.
404 Media then viewed user manuals for Mobile Fortify which gave more detail on the databases it queries after an officer uploads a photo of someone’s face. Those documents showed Mobile Fortify uses a bank of 200 million images, and sources data from the State Department, CBP, the FBI, and states. Users can also run a “Super Query,” which queries multiple datasets at once related to “individuals, vehicles, airplanes, vessels, addresses, phone numbers and firearms,” according to a memo 404 Media viewed.
Those documents indicated Mobile Fortify may soon include data from commercial data brokers too. One section said that “currently, LexisNexis is not supported in the application.” LexisNexis’s data can include peoples’ addresses, phone number, and associates.
“If Mobile Fortify integrates with something like LexisNexis or another social media monitoring service, it's not just the person on the street who could be identified, but their friends and family as well,” McDonald said.
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ICE has also purchased technology from the facial recognition company Clearview AI for years. Clearview’s database of tens of billions of images comes in large part from the open web, which the company scraped en masse. Clearview’s results show users other photos of the same person and where online they were found, potentially leading to someone’s identity. In September 404 Media reported ICE spent millions of dollars on Clearview technology to find people it believed were “assaulting” officers.404 Media reported ICE has also bought mobile iris scanning tech for its deportation arm. Originally that technology, from a company called BI2 Technologies, was designed for sheriffs to identify inmates or other known persons.
Guariglia from the EFF added “there are a lot of surveillance companies eager to profit off the fact that face recognition turns our bodies into identifying documents for the government to read.”
Jeramie Scott, senior counsel and director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center’s (EPIC) Surveillance Oversight Program, told 404 Media in an email, “facial recognition is a powerful and dangerous surveillance technology that further takes away control from the people and gives it to the government. Its use should not be taken lightly.”
“ICE’s deployment of facial recognition on whoever they deem suspicious is pure dystopian creep—the continual expansion of surveillance until our reality mirrors the dystopian worlds of science fiction. ICE continues to prove why law enforcement’s use of surveillance technology needs strict regulation to limit its expansion and to protect our privacy and civil liberties. Our failure to do this will lead us down a road where our democracy becomes unrecognizable,” he added.
ICE Spends Millions on Clearview AI Facial Recognition to Find People ‘Assaulting’ Officers
A new contract with Clearview AI explicitly says ICE is buying the tech to investigate "assaults against law enforcement officers."Joseph Cox (404 Media)
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