On a January evening in Minneapolis, a local observer—identified here only by her first name, Emily—says she was followed by an ICE vehicle, photographed and addressed aloud by an agent who recited her home address, prompting her to avoid returning home for hours. That encounter is one of dozens NPR reviewed through interviews and court filings describing federal immigration officers using digital and real‑world surveillance tools in recent months. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE and CBP, has expanded access to databases, facial‑matching apps and location data that advocates and lawyers say are being used to monitor, intimidate and sometimes detain immigrants and observers. Government officials have declined to disclose operational detail, saying law enforcement methods must be protected, while civil‑rights groups have filed lawsuits challenging the tactics.
Key takeaways
- Dozens of first‑hand accounts and court statements reviewed by NPR describe federal immigration agents photographing observers, reading names aloud and citing home addresses during operations in multiple states.
- DHS personnel are using tools that include Mobile Fortify (a facial‑matching app), an ELITE mapping app, Clearview AI contracts signed by CBP and broad access to license‑plate and DMV data.
- ICE purchased a $5 million subscription last May to obtain license‑plate reader data from Thomson Reuters; a federal judge recently found the IRS illegally shared addresses for more than 42,000 people with ICE.
- A 2022 Georgetown Law Center study found ICE could locate roughly 75% of American adults using utility records and had scanned about one in three Americans’ driver’s license photos, illustrating long‑standing data aggregation efforts.
- Activists and journalists report receiving administrative subpoenas from DHS demanding social‑media account data; civil‑rights groups say these subpoenas can chill anonymous political speech and have been contested in court.
Background
The growth of DHS surveillance tools has multiple roots: expanding agency budgets, cross‑agency data‑sharing agreements and purchases of commercial data. Under the current administration ICE and CBP have continued and broadened technology acquisitions initiated in prior years, incorporating commercial facial‑matching products and subscriptions to large data vendors. Those acquisitions follow a pattern of federal agencies granting immigration enforcement new lines into state and private data stores, including Medicaid, tax and motor‑vehicle records.
State‑level responses have varied. Some governors and state agencies limited ICE’s access to DMV databases through Nlets, a law‑enforcement information exchange, but privacy experts warn DHS can obtain similar information from commercial brokers such as Thomson Reuters or LexisNexis. Civil‑liberties organizations say the cumulative effect is an unprecedented aggregation of personal information that can be queried during fast‑moving enforcement operations.
Main event
Reporters and activists documented multiple incidents in January and February in which immigration officers appeared to photograph bystanders and license plates, and in some cases read names and addresses aloud. In Minneapolis, Emily says agents photographed her and her car, then an agent identified her by name and recited her home address while standing near her vehicle. She left the area and waited in a restaurant late into the night rather than risk driving home.
In Portland, Maine, a resident recorded agents filming her face and license plate; one masked officer told her, on video, that the agency maintained “a nice little database” and labeled her a domestic terrorist. In Oregon, testimony in a hearing described agents running license plates at an apartment complex to tie vehicles to potential targets. An ICE agent testified about using an app, ELITE, which he likened to a mapping tool that shows likely home addresses of persons of interest and helps pick operation sites.
Journalists and witnesses also reported seeing agents point phones at detained people in a way that suggested a live facial scan. Several immigration lawyers said clients were scanned with Mobile Fortify; in some cases the app failed to identify subjects but the individuals were detained anyway. DHS has said Mobile Fortify operates with a high matching threshold and that the agency will not reveal specific law‑enforcement methods.
Analysis & implications
The integration of multiple data streams—commercial data brokers, DMV records, Medicaid and IRS transmissions, and biometric matching—creates searchable profiles that can be used to identify where people live and whether they might be targeted for removal. Lawyers argue this reduces friction for enforcement actions and raises Fourth Amendment and free‑speech concerns because much of the aggregation occurs without a judicial warrant or adversarial oversight.
There are broader civic implications. Observers, journalists and activists who document enforcement actions say they feel deterred from public scrutiny when agents photograph them or request their data. Civil‑rights groups warn that administrative subpoenas and bulk data queries can chill dissent if critics risk exposure to enforcement scrutiny after online posts or protest participation.
Economically and operationally, the use of commercial data and AI tools—often purchased with multi‑million‑dollar contracts—tilts investigative capability toward agencies that can afford centralized subscriptions. That centralization concentrates power and raises questions about accountability, accuracy (notably when facial matching yields false or ambiguous results) and remedies for those misidentified.
Comparison & data
| Tool | Provider / Note | Data sources cited |
|---|---|---|
| Mobile Fortify | DHS/CBP app (facial comparison) | DHS biometric systems, fingerprint and face databases |
| ELITE | Palantir‑built app | DHS internal systems plus data shared by partner agencies |
| Clearview AI | Commercial facial‑search contract with CBP | Internet‑scraped images |
| License‑plate reader feeds | Thomson Reuters subscription (May, $5M) | ALPR networks, DMV cross‑references |
The table summarizes tools and the principal external data inputs or partnerships referenced in reporting and DHS documents. Advocates stress that the precise scope of access varies by tool and by agency agreement; in practice, DHS can mix agency‑sourced records with commercial datasets to build enforcement leads.
Reactions & quotes
“Part of what’s so pernicious is that people don’t know whether they are being intimidated or subjected to an invasive biometric scan,”
Nathan Wessler, ACLU deputy director, Speech Privacy & Technology Project
Wessler framed the risk as both a privacy invasion and a civic‑chilling tactic, stressing the opacity of how facial‑matching tools are deployed during protests and operations.
“The pattern appears to be: critics become vocal, then receive notice that the government requested their social‑media data,”
Steve Loney, ACLU of Pennsylvania
Loney described administrative subpoenas to tech platforms that seek user data without prior judicial approval; in several cases the subpoenas were later withdrawn after court challenges.
“We’re using data and aggregating data that would otherwise require a warrant,”
Stephen Manning, immigration attorney (paraphrasing court testimony)
Manning, who represented farmworkers who were scanned and detained, warned that combined data use can effectively bypass traditional judicial checks on searches and seizures.
Unconfirmed
- Whether DHS routinely scraped social media for facial images to feed Mobile Fortify—DHS has denied the app scrapes open‑source social media, but the full operational details are not publicly verifiable.
- The extent to which CBP’s Clearview AI contract has been used in field operations to identify protesters or bystanders remains unclear from public records.
- The causal link between critical social‑media posts and later revocations of Global Entry status has not been independently verified in every reported case.
Bottom line
The reporting NPR compiled shows DHS immigration components increasingly combine biometric apps, commercial data subscriptions and interagency records to generate leads and perform in‑field identity checks. For those targeted—and for bystanders who document enforcement—this creates both the practical risk of detention and the intangible effect of intimidation that can suppress public scrutiny.
Legal challenges and congressional scrutiny are underway, but many details remain shielded by law‑enforcement confidentiality claims. If courts and lawmakers demand greater transparency and tighter limits on data sharing, agencies may face constraints; absent those reforms, advocates argue, the pattern of broad data aggregation will continue to reshape enforcement practice and civil‑liberties risks nationwide.
Sources
- NPR reporting — news reporting summarizing interviews, court filings and documents (primary source for this article).