Every time you drive past a highway camera, unlock your phone near a cell tower, or post a photo online, you might be feeding one of the most extensive domestic surveillance operations ever built by a federal agency. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has quietly assembled a sprawling technological infrastructure that can track, identify, and monitor millions of people across the country — and most Americans have no idea it exists.
The system did not appear overnight. It grew through hundreds of contracts, interagency data-sharing agreements, and executive order workarounds that have stripped away longstanding privacy guardrails. Here is what we know about how it works, who it targets, and why legal experts say it threatens fundamental constitutional rights.
The Scale of ICE’s Surveillance Machine
ICE’s surveillance apparatus is not a single program. It is a patchwork of technologies, databases, and private-sector partnerships that collectively give the agency the ability to monitor people at a scale that would have been unthinkable a decade ago.
A December 2025 investigation by Politico revealed that ICE had made large purchases of high-tech surveillance equipment expected to total at least $300 million. That spending spree, combined with executive order workarounds on federal data privacy standards, signaled what reporters described as “a shift in its enforcement policy, looking beyond immigrants and toward American critics of its officers’ behavior.”
The surveillance web draws from multiple data streams simultaneously. License plate reader networks log vehicle movements across thousands of locations. Cell phone location data, purchased from commercial brokers, maps where people live, work, and travel. Social media monitoring tools scrape public posts for intelligence. And at the center of the operation sits a facial recognition system that has been used more than 100,000 times inside the United States.
Facial Recognition: Mobile Fortify and the Biometric Dragnet
The most controversial piece of ICE’s surveillance toolkit is a mobile app called Mobile Fortify, built by Japanese tech conglomerate NEC Corporation. The app was first exposed through leaked emails and an internal user manual obtained by 404 Media in June 2025. What those documents revealed alarmed privacy advocates and lawmakers alike.
Mobile Fortify allows ICE agents to snap a photo of anyone they encounter — on the street, at a traffic stop, at someone’s front door — and run that image against a massive network of federal databases. These include:
- IDENT — the DHS Automated Biometric Identification System, containing more than 270 million biometric records
- CBP’s Traveler Verification Service — photos taken at airports of people entering and exiting the country
- The State Department’s visa and passport photo database
- The FBI’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC)
- TECS and SEACATS — CBP’s case tracking and seized assets systems
Within seconds, the app returns a name, date of birth, possible citizenship status, and whether a visa may have expired. A lawsuit filed by Illinois and Chicago in January 2026 alleged that DHS agents had used Mobile Fortify more than 100,000 times in the interior of the United States — far beyond the ports of entry and formal investigations where facial recognition had previously been limited.
The accuracy problems are alarming. In a case reported by 404 Media in January 2026, a woman identified in court documents as “MJMA” was scanned by Mobile Fortify twice during the same interaction. The app returned two entirely different names. Both were wrong.
U.S. Representative Bennie Thompson, ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, put it bluntly: “ICE officials have told us that an apparent biometric match by Mobile Fortify is a ‘definitive’ determination of a person’s status and that an ICE officer may ignore evidence of American citizenship — including a birth certificate — if the app says the person is an alien.”
No Right to Refuse
ICE has stated that individuals cannot decline to be scanned by Mobile Fortify. Photos taken — including those of U.S. citizens cleared of any immigration issue — will be stored for 15 years. The agency has not performed a Privacy Impact Assessment for the app, a standard transparency measure required for federal technologies that collect personal data.
Eight U.S. senators, including Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Ron Wyden, sent a letter to acting ICE Director Todd Lyons in June 2025 demanding transparency about the app. After receiving no response by the October deadline, they sent a second letter in November 2025. As of early 2026, ICE has still not publicly answered their questions.
Beyond Fortify: Clearview AI, Spyware, and Data Brokers
Mobile Fortify is just one node in a much larger surveillance network.
In September 2025, ICE signed a $10 million contract with Clearview AI — the largest contract in the controversial company’s history. Clearview’s technology works differently from Fortify: rather than searching government databases, it scrapes billions of images from social media platforms, news sites, and the open web to build a massive faceprint database. A previous $2.3 million ICE contract with Clearview in 2021 had already drawn criticism for the privacy implications of that approach.
Then there is Paragon Solutions, an Israeli spyware firm whose tool, Graphite, enables remote access to mobile phones — including encrypted messaging apps like Signal and WhatsApp. ICE’s $2 million contract with Paragon, initially signed under the Biden administration but paused under a 2023 executive order restricting spyware, has reportedly been reactivated under looser oversight guidelines.
ICE also purchases commercial cell phone location data from data brokers, bypassing the warrant requirements that would normally apply if the agency sought the same information directly from telecom carriers. This data reveals granular movement patterns — where someone sleeps, where their children go to school, which churches or legal aid offices they visit.
And Palantir Technologies, the data analytics firm co-founded by Peter Thiel, continues to provide ICE with its Investigative Case Management system, which aggregates data from dozens of sources into searchable profiles. Civil liberties organizations have raised concerns that the Palantir platform effectively functions as a mass surveillance system, connecting license plate reader data, utility records, and social media activity into a single investigative tool.
Impact on Immigrant Communities
The practical effects of this surveillance infrastructure extend far beyond the people ICE is actively trying to arrest. The knowledge that the government can identify you from a photograph, track your car, and monitor your phone creates a chilling effect that reshapes daily life for millions of people.
Immigrant communities report avoiding hospitals, skipping doctor’s appointments, and pulling children out of school — despite the Trump administration’s reversal of policies that previously limited ICE enforcement at sensitive locations like schools, hospitals, and houses of worship.
Fear of surveillance has also disrupted industries that rely on immigrant labor. Reuters and multiple outlets have documented declines in agriculture, construction, tourism, and hospitality sectors as workers avoid public spaces and routine activities.
The chilling effect reaches U.S. citizens too. In October 2025, Apple and Google removed apps from their stores that the public had been using to document and archive videos of ICE activities. Meta removed a Facebook group dedicated to tracking ICE agents at the Justice Department’s request. The message was clear: watching the watchers would not be tolerated.
Legal Challenges and Constitutional Questions
Courts have begun pushing back on the surveillance apparatus, though the legal landscape remains fractured.
The Illinois and Chicago lawsuit, filed in January 2026, directly challenges DHS’s use of Mobile Fortify as exceeding what federal law authorizes for biometric data collection. A federal court has separately ruled that the databases Fortify searches are too inaccurate to be used for procuring administrative warrants.
The broader pattern of ICE enforcement without judicial warrants raises Fourth Amendment concerns. Most immigration arrests are carried out under administrative warrants — authorized by immigration officers or executive branch agencies, not federal judges. A whistleblower complaint filed with Congress in January 2026 disclosed an internal May 2025 ICE memorandum, approved by acting Director Todd Lyons, that authorized the use of these administrative warrants to enter people’s homes. Constitutional scholars have argued this violates Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches.
Courts have ruled more than 4,400 times that the Trump administration is detaining people illegally, according to tracking by news organizations covering immigration enforcement.
The absence of a Privacy Impact Assessment for Mobile Fortify also creates legal vulnerability. Federal law generally requires such assessments before deploying technologies that collect personal information. ICE’s refusal to conduct one — while simultaneously stating that scanned photos will be retained for 15 years — has become a focal point for digital rights organizations.
The Mobile Identify Expansion
ICE has not limited biometric scanning tools to its own agents. A companion app called Mobile Identify was designed for use by local and regional law enforcement to assist in immigration enforcement — effectively deputizing city police and county sheriffs as extensions of ICE’s surveillance capabilities.
The backlash was swift enough that Mobile Identify was pulled from the Google Play Store. But the underlying strategy — distributing federal surveillance tools to local agencies — reflects a broader push to embed immigration enforcement into routine policing nationwide.
What Families Should Know
If you or someone in your household could be affected by immigration enforcement, understanding the surveillance landscape is a practical matter, not a theoretical one. Here is what legal advocates recommend:
- Know your rights at the door. ICE administrative warrants do not carry the same legal authority as judicial warrants signed by a federal judge. You are generally not required to open your door for an administrative warrant, though agents may attempt entry regardless.
- Understand that your phone is a tracking device. Cell phone location data is commercially available to ICE without a warrant. Consider location privacy settings and be aware that simply carrying a phone generates a record of your movements.
- Facial recognition can be wrong. Mobile Fortify has produced false matches, including returning two different incorrect identities for the same person. If you are detained based on a biometric scan, insist on providing identifying documents and request legal counsel immediately.
- ICE says you cannot refuse a scan. The agency’s position is that individuals cannot decline to have their photo taken for Fortify. However, this policy is being challenged in court, and an attorney may be able to argue that evidence obtained this way is inadmissible.
- Document everything. If you witness or experience an ICE encounter, write down badge numbers, vehicle descriptions, times, and locations as soon as it is safe to do so. This information is critical for legal challenges.
- Connect with legal aid organizations. Groups like the Innovation Law Lab, the ACLU, and local immigration legal services can provide guidance specific to your situation. Many offer free consultations.
What Comes Next
The trajectory is clear. ICE’s $300 million surveillance expansion, its contracts with Clearview AI and Paragon Solutions, and the unchecked deployment of Mobile Fortify all point toward an agency building permanent infrastructure for mass identification and tracking. The 15-year retention policy for Fortify photos means that data collected today will persist well into the 2040s.
Whether courts, Congress, or public pressure will impose meaningful limits on this system remains an open question. What is not in question is that the surveillance web already exists, it is growing, and it touches far more people than the agency’s stated immigration enforcement mission would suggest.
For the millions of families navigating this reality every day, knowledge is the first line of defense.
Sarah Vasquez is a criminal justice reporter covering law enforcement technology, immigration policy, and civil liberties. Follow her coverage at Jail411.com.
