ICE’s facial recognition app draws scrutiny over errors and increased state surveillance

A federal agent stops a car during a “routine” traffic stop amid the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant crackdown. The driver rolls down the window, and before asking for any documents, the officer takes a picture of the person behind the wheel. Or perhaps, during an immigration raid, some neighbors try to prevent masked agents from entering a private residence without a warrant, and a confrontation ensues. The agents restrain a witness, and while the person is still struggling on the ground, they point a cell phone camera at them and take a picture.

These aren’t just photos for posterity. The pictures are immediately sent to a facial recognition database, supposedly to search for matches with known criminals. But since the implementation of a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) directive last spring, they also end up in a government database about which little is known. This entire process is now under scrutiny for alleged inaccuracies, technical glitches, and for threatening an unprecedented surge in state surveillance in the United States.

Amid the budget negotiations over DHS funding — which center on the implementation of limits and controls on the actions of federal agents carrying out President Trump’s immigration policy — the debate over the use of biometric identification systems has also entered Congress. A group of Democratic senators introduced legislation last week to prohibit the DHS and its immigration agencies — including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) — from using facial recognition technology.

The project, dubbed the ICE Out of Our Faces Act, is spearheaded by Senator Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, along with Senators Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden, both from Oregon, and Representative Pramila Jayapal from Washington State. The initiative seeks to halt what its proponents describe as a biometric surveillance apparatus without clear limits or democratic oversight.

“For years, I’ve been ringing the alarm bells about the dangers of a national surveillance state built on facial recognition technology. Now, we’re seeing Trump’s lawless federal agents deploy this technology on our streets across the nation as he tries to tighten his authoritarian grip,” said Senator Merkley when introducing the bill. “Without oversight, this technology is dangerous in the hands of any government, and the Trump administration is abusing it to trample on privacy, freedom of speech, and civil liberties. All freedom-loving Americans must join us to stand up to this assault on folks’ fundamental rights.”

The legislation would explicitly prohibit ICE and CBP from acquiring or using such technologies. It would also require the deletion of all data collected through these systems and allow affected individuals and state attorneys general to seek civil penalties in cases of violations. The legislation is supported by organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), among others.

A controversial app

The legislative push coincides with an investigation by the technology publication WIRED, which documents how the DHS began using the Mobile Fortify app nationwide in the spring of 2025. According to department records and internal documents reviewed by the magazine, the app was fast‑tracked and launched without the privacy review procedures that have traditionally accompanied technologies with direct civil‑rights implications.

Mobile Fortify was officially presented as a tool to “determine or verify” identities during detentions and federal immigration operations, justified as complying with an executive order signed by Trump at the start of his second term, which called for a “total and efficient” tightening of immigration policy. Yet, as WIRED’s analysis shows, the system’s architecture is not built to reliably confirm identities. It produces possible matches rather than positive identifications — a limitation widely noted by experts and further undermined when photos are taken without optimal lighting or stability. In the field, passport‑style photo conditions are rarely present, creating a significant risk of false matches.

According to patents reviewed by WIRED, the technology behind Mobile Fortify is based on algorithms developed by NEC Corporation of America, the U.S. Subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate NEC. The system converts facial images captured on the street into biometric templates that are compared against government databases, returning a series of “candidates” who exceed a similarity threshold. That threshold can be adjusted to prioritize speed and volume, at the cost of increasing the risk of false positives, especially when images are taken outside of controlled environments.

The report also reveals that the app’s approval coincided with the dismantling of core privacy controls within the DHS and the quiet elimination of internal guidelines restricting the use of facial recognition. These changes were overseen by Roman Jankowski, a former lawyer for the conservative Heritage Foundation and contributor to the political blueprint Project 2025, who now holds a senior position in the department’s privacy office.

Both experts and civil rights advocates warn that the use of this technology in everyday contexts amplifies the risks of mass surveillance and discrimination. Numerous cases have been documented in which federal agents deployed as part of the Trump administration’s large-scale immigration operations scanned the faces of U.S. Citizens, observers, and protesters. What’s more, under current lax regulations, the collected biometric data can be stored for years and shared among agencies, with little transparency regarding its use or error correction mechanisms.

For all these reasons, the sponsors of the ICE Out of Our Faces Act believe the problem goes beyond the technical accuracy of the application used. “The Trump administration isn’t deploying these tools to maintain public safety. They are doing so to silence lawful speech and to punish dissent,” said Senator Markey.

Given Republicans currently control both chambers of Congress, the bill is unlikely to pass, but the debate it has sparked once again pits two visions against each other: one in which the state expands its surveillance powers in the name of immigration control, and another in which these tools pose a direct threat to privacy, freedom of expression, and the constitutional limits on government power.

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