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ICE’s Plan to Let Cops Around the Country Scan Faces to Verify Immigration Status

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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.

The app would be a dramatic escalation in the technology being used to carry out the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda. ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are already using Mobile Fortify, a facial recognition app that taps into a wide array of DHS and other government databases, on U.S. streets, stopping people and scanning their faces. With that app, ICE officers point their phone camera at a person, the app scans their face, and the app returns a wealth of biographical information and whether they have been issued an order of removal. The app has made mistakes and been used against American citizens.

With this second app, much of that capability would now be in the hands of local police who essentially have become extensions of ICE.

“This embarrassingly cursory document utterly fails to acknowledge the harms that will flow from putting a flawed face recognition app in the hands of many thousands of local police,” Nate Wessler, deputy director with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, told 404 Media. “Sending local cops out to indiscriminately scan our faces, with a system that is known to generate false matches, that saves our data for 15 years, and that ensnares police into making immigration decisions that they are untrained for and that will undermine community safety efforts, is a recipe for disaster and for terrorizing members of communities across the country. DHS’s privacy regulators fell down on the job. Now it’s up to lawmakers to ensure this dangerous technology stays off our streets.”

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“These ICE non-federal officers will use the TFM [Task Force Module] app during an encounter to verify the target of an operation’s identity, and if warranted, investigate and determine the target’s immigration status (i.e., whether the individual is subject to removal) through facial recognition,” the document reads.

The name of the app is the “ICE Task Force Module App (TFM App),” according to the document. 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.

A screenshot of the document. Image: 404 Media.

404 Media previously reported the existence of Mobile Identify, which appears to be the same app under a different name, in November. It was removed a short while later from the Google Play Store and has not returned. The new document also mentions making the app available through the Apple App Store.

It is not clear when, or if, ICE or other DHS components will roll out the app to local police. DHS did not respond to a request for comment, and the document lists the launch date as September 24, 2025. But the new document describes in detail the plan behind giving this facial recognition app to local police.

“The collection of face images allows ICE non-federal law enforcement officers to verify identity and immigration status (whether the individual is removable),” the document adds. ICE acknowledges in the document that the app may be used on U.S. citizens. “It is conceivable that a photo taken by an ICE non-federal law enforcement officers using the TFM mobile application could be that of someone other than a removable individual, including U.S. citizens,” it reads.

A screenshot of the document. Image: 404 Media.

“ICE non-federal law enforcement officers do not know an individual's citizenship when first encountered and will use the TFM mobile application to determine or verify the individual's identity and confirm that they are a match to CBP TVS,” it reads. TVS is the Traveler Verification Service, the CBP system usually used to verify people entering the country at ports of entry, but which ICE has now turned inwards onto American streets.

The app is designed for members of the 287(g) program, an ICE initiative that grants local and state police certain immigration enforcement powers. It “essentially turns police officers into ICE agents,” according to the New York Civil Liberties Union. More agencies have joined the program recently, including Texas’s Highway Patrol. At the time of writing, 1,220 agencies in 32 states and 2 U.S. territories participate in the program, according to ICE’s website.

These are the agencies that would potentially be given access to the app, as the document points specifically to 287(g) as the legal basis of the app.

“This document confirms our worst fears about the spread of ICE's abusive surveillance technology. Face surveillance was already a dangerous infringement of civil liberties in the hands of ICE agents,” Cooper Quintin, security researcher and senior public interest technologist with the EFF, told 404 Media. “Putting it in the hands of ICE's local partners will subject even more Americans to omnipresent surveillance and unjust detainment.”

After 404 Media revealed the existence of both Mobile Fortify and Mobile Identify, a group of six democratic lawmakers proposed legislation that would rein in the apps, and entirely kill the local enforcement version.

404 Media obtained the document through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with CBP. 404 Media previously obtained a similar document from CBP for Mobile Fortify. That document said ICE believes people cannot refuse to be scanned by its app.

At a recent border security conference, Matthew Elliston, assistant director of Law Enforcement Systems & Analysis at ICE, said Mobile Fortify has been used more than 200,000 times, multiple attendees of the conference told 404 Media.

Based on comments from that conference and an DHS source, 404 Media reported that ICE plans to develop its own smartglasses to “supplement” its facial recognition app.

Update: this piece has been updated with comment from the EFF.

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ICE plans to give potentially more than a thousand agencies access to a facial recognition app that verifies a person's immigration status.

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ICE plans to give potentially more than a thousand agencies access to a facial recognition app that verifies a person's immigration status.