Federal immigration agents now deploy biometric scanners, cellphone tracking, and military-grade surveillance without warrants or consent
Federal immigration agents knocking on doors across Minnesota this week arrived equipped with handheld biometric scanners, cellphone tracking databases that geofence entire neighborhoods, and military-grade drones capable of identifying individuals from nearly eight miles away.
These aren’t experimental prototypes. They’re operational tools deployed daily by ICE, thanks to legislation passed last summer that transformed the agency into the country’s most heavily funded law enforcement operation and loosened restrictions on surveillance technology.
According to a lawsuit filed by Illinois and Chicago against the Department of Homeland Security this month, ICE has used its Mobile Fortify facial recognition system over 100,000 times in field operations. Agents hold phones inches from people’s faces, including U.S. citizens, bystanders, and protesters, capturing biometric data without consent, notification, or the ability to opt out.
Mobile Fortify instantly compares captured facial images against multiple databases containing millions of immigration histories and prior DHS encounters. Unlike airport facial recognition where travelers typically receive notification, street-level deployment offers no such choices.
An AP journalist witnessed masked agents in Columbia Heights, Minnesota holding phones a foot from people’s faces during an operation that detained a five-year-old boy and his father. Residents reported no warning, no explanation, and no recourse.
The technology doesn’t stop at facial recognition. ICE purchased a subscription to Penlink’s Webloc database in September, allowing agents to geofence specific areas and track all phones within those boundaries. This represents a direct workaround to the Supreme Court’s 2018 ruling that established mobile phone location data requires warrants.
ICE had stopped using commercial location databases in January 2024 but resumed the practice under the current administration. The legal theory is that buying data from third parties differs from compelling phone companies to hand it over, sidestepping Fourth Amendment warrant requirements through a commercial transaction.
Drones have become standard in immigration enforcement operations. ICE purchased Skydio X10D units advertised as capable of detecting individuals from 7.5 miles away and identifying them from 0.8 miles. Many models carry night vision and thermal imaging cameras.
The sister agency Customs and Border Protection operates larger equipment. CBP flew an MQ-9 Predator, the same military-grade drone used in overseas combat operations, over anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles last summer. The Air Force has previously disclosed equipping MQ-9 Predators with systems tracking everything that moves across 40 square miles in high definition.
At ground level, automated license plate readers photograph vehicles and store that data in commercial and government databases. ICE ordered mobile readers from Motorola Solutions last fall and renewed contracts with Thomson Reuters for access to a database containing over 20 billion plate scans.
Behind these visible technologies operates software that fundamentally reshapes how immigration enforcement identifies targets. ICE’s Enhanced Leads Identification & Targeting platform, ELITE, uses machine learning to direct agents toward locations like apartment complexes and parking lots where undocumented immigrants may statistically be present, even when no specific individual has been identified.
This represents a shift from targeted enforcement toward probabilistic sweeps. Agents no longer need to know exactly who they’re looking for. ELITE suggests locations based on data patterns, and Mobile Fortify identifies whoever happens to be present when agents arrive.
A case documented in the Illinois lawsuit illustrates the system’s dangerous asymmetry. A U.S. citizen was detained because Mobile Fortify incorrectly matched her face to someone else’s immigration record. Despite documentary evidence including a birth certificate proving citizenship, ICE officers trusted the algorithmic match over official documents.
The woman was eventually released, but there was no automatic halt when the error was discovered, no audit of how the misidentification occurred, no requirement to purge her biometric data, and no consequence for relying on demonstrably false matches.
ICE treats Mobile Fortify matches as definitive while simultaneously disclaiming any obligation to quantify error rates. Yet the agency has told lawmakers that officers may disregard documentary citizenship evidence if the app indicates otherwise, effectively prioritizing algorithm outputs over legal documents.
ICE leaders, backed by Trump administration officials, have asserted authority to use surveillance tools for monitoring and investigating anti-ICE protester networks, including U.S. citizens engaged in constitutionally protected speech and assembly.
Body camera footage from agents has documented this expansion. Following enforcement operations in Chicago’s Brighton Park neighborhood, agents pointed weapons at gathered residents and journalists before deploying pepper balls and tear gas. Agents have used phones, body-worn cameras, and vehicle-mounted systems to document encounters with bystanders, journalists, and protesters.
Democratic lawmakers and civil rights groups argue these practices infringe on privacy and free speech rights of immigrants and citizens alike. The expansion transforms ICE from an immigration enforcement agency into a broader domestic surveillance apparatus capable of monitoring political opposition to its operations.
Much of ICE’s surveillance capability relies on purchasing data from commercial brokers rather than collecting it directly. Thomson Reuters sells license plate databases. Weather and gaming apps sell location data. Clearview AI offers facial recognition trained on billions of images scraped from social media without user consent.
The government portrays these purchases as ordinary commercial transactions. Privacy advocates argue that buying data the government couldn’t legally compel constitutes an end-run around constitutional protections.
DHS states it won’t disclose methods when asked about expanding surveillance tool use. That assurance rings hollow when the same agency deploys facial recognition against citizens without notification, geofences neighborhoods to track everyone present, and flies military drones over constitutionally protected protests.
