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The Trump administration has thrown billions at purging non-white people from this country. Most of that has ended up in the hands of ICE, which has — in turn — thrown hundreds of millions at a number of private companies offering bespoke and/or off-the-shelf surveillance solutions.
The slide down the slippery slope began less than six months after Trump took office in 2025, with the DHS repurposing tech used at border crossings for deployment as far inland as ICE, CBP, etc. were willing to travel. The facial recognition app of choice is “Mobile Fortify,” which ties into the DHS’s pre-existing databases and makes use of any number of third-party facial recognition products. (Which may include the much-reviled Clearview AI, yet another company being paid millions to provide the government with questionable tech predicated on even more questionable business ethics.)
As has almost always been the case with the DHS, the tech was primed, pumped, and deployed without proper testing or legally required privacy impact assessments (PIA) in place. And it was in such a hurry to spread its surveillance tech throughout the nation that it willingly deployed a product that not only couldn’t reliably do the one thing it was asked to do — verify identities — but was only able to be deployed by unilaterally stripping away Congressional limits placed on government use of facial recognition tech.
We’re still waiting on PIAs for Mobile Fortify to arrive and we certainly don’t expect them anytime soon. We also haven’t seen the DHS even pretend to address the app’s major flaws. One would think an app that’s still half-broken would have an extremely short lifespan. But this administration doesn’t care whether or not it works well. It’s only interested in subjecting as many people as possible to it.
Apparently, it’s not enough that thousands of federal agents have access to this app. As Joseph Cox reports for 404 Media, ICE wants to make things exponentially worse by giving it to pretty much any cop who wants to give it a whirl.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) plans to give potentially more than a thousand local law enforcement agencies a facial recognition app that would query a database of hundreds of millions of images to verify someone’s immigration status, according to an internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) document obtained by 404 Media.
Regular cops will be given access to “Task Force Module,” which will use the underlying tech (and database access) found in the ICE app. Apparently the only difference is that TFM will provide text prompts to cops once the app has finished (mis)identifying someone.
When an officer scans someone’s face, the app will run their face against a database of more than 250 million DHS and State Department records, and then provide instructions to the officer. Either “not detain or arrest under ICE jurisdiction,” or the app will provide a reference code the officer can use to get additional information from ICE.
The document readily admits that DHS expects this app to be used on US citizens. After all, how else can you verify their citizenship? I mean other than the documents people normally carry on them, like ID cards. Or the fact that people not crossing US borders aren’t legally obligated to prove they’re citizens to federal officers just because they’ve decided to spend more time far away from the nation’s borders. This app is a perversion of the American way — a point-and-shoot “papers please” by proxy that allows officers to, in essence, demand production of documents they’re not entitled to ask for.
If ICE, etc. actually cared enough to do their job right, an app like this wouldn’t be necessary. It should have stayed at the border where the government has the right to demand proof of citizenship. Now, this surveillance kudzu will become another toy for cops who are similarly uninterested in respecting rights and equally willing to treat everyone like a suspect because it’s easier than actually doing the legwork.
“Papers please” everywhere all the time is disturbing enough. But giving officers another surveillance toy that’s flawed and deployed without absolutely zero oversight is just going to deliver new horror stories of surveillance abuse by powerful government employees who know no one above them cares what happens to those the government turns its cameras on. Cops and federal agents alike are going to use the tech to stalk and harass protesters, critics, and anyone else they might want to fuck with. And all in service of a bigoted push to rid the nation of people who actually make it great.
Filed Under: cbp, dhs, facial recognition, facial recognition tech, ice, mass deportation, surveillance, trump administration
Companies: clearview ai, mobile fortify
The DHS and its components want to find non-white people to deport by any means necessary. Of course, “necessary” is something that’s on a continually sliding scale with Trump back in office, which means everything (legal or not) is “necessary” if it can help White House advisor Stephen Miller hit his self-imposed 3,000 arrests per day goal.
As was reported last week, DHS components (ICE, CBP) are using a web app that supposedly can identify people and link them with citizenship documents. As has always been the case with DHS components (dating back to the Obama era), the rule of thumb is “deploy first, compile legally-required paperwork later.” The pattern has never changed. ICE, CBP, etc. acquire new tech, hand it out to agents, and much later — if ever — the agencies compile and publish their legally-required Privacy Impact Assessments (PIAs).
PIAs are supposed to precede deployments of new tech that might have an impact on privacy rights and other civil liberties. In almost every case, the tech has been deployed far ahead of the precedential paperwork.
As one would expect, the Trump administration was never going to be the one to ensure the paperwork arrived ahead of the deployment. As we covered recently, both ICE and CBP are using tech provided by NEC called “Mobile Fortify” to identify migrants who are possibly subject to removal, even though neither agency has bothered to publish a Privacy Impact Assessment.
As Wired reported, the app is being used widely by officers working with both agencies, despite both agencies making it clear they don’t have the proper paperwork in place to justify these deployments.
While CBP says there are “sufficient monitoring protocols” in place for the app, ICE says that the development of monitoring protocols is in progress, and that it will identify potential impacts during an AI impact assessment. According to guidance from the Office of Management and Budget, which was issued before the inventory says the app was deployed for either CBP or ICE, agencies are supposed to complete an AI impact assessment before deploying any high-impact use case. Both CBP and ICE say the app is “high-impact” and “deployed.”
While this is obviously concerning, it would be far less concerning if we weren’t dealing with an administration that has told immigration officers that they don’t need warrants to enter houses or effect arrests. And it would be insanely less concerning if we weren’t dealing with an administration that has claimed that simply observing or reporting on immigration enforcement efforts is an act of terrorism.
Officers working for the combined forces of bigotry d/b/a/ “immigration enforcement” know they’re safe. The Supreme Court has ensured they’re safe by making it impossible to sue federal officers. And the people running immigration-related agencies have made it clear they don’t even care if the ends justify the means.
These facts make what’s reported here even worse, especially when officers are using the app to “identify” pretty much anyone they can point a smartphone at.
Despite DHS repeatedly framing Mobile Fortify as a tool for identifying people through facial recognition, however, the app does not actually “verify” the identities of people stopped by federal immigration agents—a well-known limitation of the technology and a function of how Mobile Fortify is designed and used.
[…]
Records reviewed by WIRED also show that DHS’s hasty approval of Fortify last May was enabled by dismantling centralized privacy reviews and quietly removing department-wide limits on facial recognition—changes overseen by a former Heritage Foundation lawyer and Project 2025 contributor, who now serves in a senior DHS privacy role.
Even if you’re the sort of prick who thinks whatever happens to non-citizens is deserved due to their alleged violation of civil statutes, one would hope you’d actually care what happens to your fellow citizens. I mean, one would hope, but even the federal government doesn’t care what happens to US citizens if they happen to be unsupportive of Trump’s migrant-targeting crime wave.
DHS—which has declined to detail the methods and tools that agents are using, despite repeated calls from oversight officials and nonprofit privacy watchdogs—has used Mobile Fortify to scan the faces not only of “targeted individuals,” but also people later confirmed to be US citizens and others who were observing or protesting enforcement activity.
TLDR and all that: DHS knows this tool performs worst in the situations where it’s used most. DHS and its components also knew they were supposed to produce PIAs before deploying privacy-impacting tech. And DHS knows its agencies are not only misusing the tech to convert AI shrugs into probable cause, but are using it to identify people protesting or observing their efforts, which means this tech is also a potential tool of unlawful retribution.
There’s nothing left to be discussed. This tech will continue to be used because it can turn bad photos into migrant arrests. And its off-label use is just as effective: it allows ICE and CBP agents to identify protesters and observers, even as DHS officials continue to claim doxing should be a federal offense if they’re not the ones doing it. Everything about this is bullshit. But bullshit is all this administration has.
Filed Under: border patrol, cbp, dhs, facial recognition tech, ice, privacy impact assessment, surveillance, trump administration
Companies: mobile fortify, nec
In the grand scheme of things — the wanton cruelty, the routine violations of rights, the actual fucking murders — this may only seem like a blip on the mass deportation continuum. But this report from Dell Cameron for Wired is still important. It not only explains why federal officers are approaching people with cellphones drawn nearly as often as they’re approaching them with guns drawn, but also shows the administration is yet again pretending it’s a law unto itself.
On Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security published new details about Mobile Fortify, the face recognition app that federal immigration agents use to identify people in the field, undocumented immigrants and US citizens alike. The details, including the company behind the app, were published as part of DHS’s 2025 AI Use Case Inventory, which federal agencies are required to release periodically.
The inventory includes two entries for Mobile Fortify—one for Customs and Border Protection (CBP), another for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—and says the app is in the “deployment” stage for both. CBP says that Mobile Fortify became “operational” at the beginning of May last year, while ICE got access to it on May 20, 2025. That date is about a month before 404 Media first reported on the app’s existence.
A lot was going on last May, in terms of anti-migrant efforts and the casual refusal to recognize long-standing constitutional rights. That was the same month immigration officers were told they could enter people’s homes while only carrying self-issued “administrative warrants,” which definitely aren’t the same thing as the judicial warrants the government actually needs to enter areas provided the utmost in Fourth Amendment protection.
The app federal officers are using is made by NEC, a tech company that’s been around since long before ICE and CBP become the mobile atrocities they are. Prior to this revelation, NEC had only been associated with developing biometric software with an eye on crafting something that could be swiftly deployed and just as quickly scaled to meet the government’s needs. This particular app was never made public prior to this.
ICE claims it’s not a direct customer. It’s only a beneficiary of the CBP’s existing contract with NEC. That’s a meaningless distinction when multiple federal agencies have been co-opted into the administration’s bigoted push to rid the nation of brown people.
As is always the case (and this precedes Trump 2.0), CBP and ICE are rolling out tech far ahead of the privacy impact paperwork that’s supposed to filed before anything goes live.
While CBP says there are “sufficient monitoring protocols” in place for the app, ICE says that the development of monitoring protocols is in progress, and that it will identify potential impacts during an AI impact assessment. According to guidance from the Office of Management and Budget, which was issued before the inventory says the app was deployed for either CBP or ICE, agencies are supposed to complete an AI impact assessment before deploying any high-impact use case. Both CBP and ICE say the app is “high-impact” and “deployed.”
This is standard operating procedure for the federal government. The FBI and DEA were deploying surveillance tech well ahead of Privacy Impact Assessments (PIAs) as far back as [oh wow] 2014, while the nation was still being run by someone who generally appeared to be a competent statesman. That nothing has changed since makes it clear this problem is endemic.
But things are a bit worse now that Trump is running an administration stocked with fully-cooked MAGA acolytes. In the past, our rights might have received a bit of lip service and the occasional congressional hearing about the lack of required Privacy Impact Assessments.
None of that will be happening now. No one in the DHS is even going to bother to apply pressure to those charged with crafting these assessments. And no one will threaten (much less terminate) the tech deployment until these assessments have been completed. I would fully expect this second Trump term to come and go without the delivery of legally-required paperwork, especially since oversight of these agencies will be completely nonexistent as long as the GOP holds a congressional majority.
We lose. The freshly stocked swamp wins. And while it’s normal to expect the federal government to bristle at the suggestion of oversight, it’s entirely abnormal to allow an administration that embraces white Christian nationalism to act as though the only holy text any Trump appointee subscribes to was handed down by Aleister Crowley: Do what thou wilt. That is the whole of the law.
Filed Under: border patrol, cbp, dhs, facial recognition tech, ice, mass deportation, surveillance, trump administration
Companies: mobile fortify, nec
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