Civil liberties groups demand DHS shut down ICE’s Mobile Fortify app

A broad coalition of civil rights, privacy, and immigrant advocacy organizations is urging the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to immediately halt Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) use of Mobile Fortify, a smartphone-based facial recognition app that ICE agents are now deploying during street encounters across the U.S.

In a sharply worded letter sent to DHS Chief Privacy Officer Roman Jankowski, thirty organizations warn that the app represents one of the most alarming expansions of federal biometric surveillance in years, one that threatens civil rights and is already being used in ways that violate DHS’s own policies.

The groups say Mobile Fortify turns an ordinary government issued smartphone into a real-time biometric scanner. ICE Agents can point the device at someone’s face, capture a photo without consent, and instantly query multiple federal databases to determine immigration status or retrieve information about individuals, vehicles, addresses, phone numbers, and even firearms.

The letter cites reporting that the app connects to a “Super Query” system that feeds data from DHS and Department of Justice repositories, including hundreds of millions of biometric records, effectively bringing the data-matching power of a border checkpoint directly into ICE’s field operations.

The civil liberties groups argue that the technology’s accuracy problems, its deployment during unregulated street encounters, and ICE’s claimed authority to use a facial recognition match as a definitive determination of someone’s immigration status create an unprecedented risk of wrongful detention or deportation.

“ICE agents apparently have the discretion to use a facial recognition match as a definitive determination of a person’s immigration status even in the face of contrary evidence,” the groups said. “Using face identification as a definitive determination of immigration status is immensely disturbing … and will undoubtedly lead to wrongful detentions, deportations, or worse.”

The letter notes that no other U.S. law enforcement agency, including other DHS components, treats a facial recognition match as dispositive. Both Customs and Border Protection and Transportation Security Administration require agents to verify identity using government-issued documents when a facial recognition result is in question.

The groups said, “ICE’s use of facial recognition in the field is especially troubling given the technology’s failings,” noting that “recent studies have shown facial recognition has higher errors rates for women and people of color. [Most] documented wrongful arrests due to misidentification by facial recognition have been of people of color.”

Continuing, the groups said “the technology is notably even less accurate when the images used are not of ideal quality – such as the images ICE likely obtains in field settings versus a controlled environment. The fact that ICE field agents are mainly using facial recognition on people of color virtually guarantees incidents of misidentification.”

“Make no mistake, ICE’s use of facial recognition in the field would be just as disturbing even if the technology was 100 percent accurate,” the groups stated.

The civil rights organizations said there is already at least one reported case of a U.S. citizen whom ICE concluded “could be deported based on biometric confirmation of his identity,” an incident the groups say demonstrates the dangers of relying on the technology in the field.

The coalition also highlighted growing evidence that ICE may be using Mobile Fortify to scan protesters and monitor First Amendment protected activity.

“Videos online already show ICE agents aiming their phones at protestors, suggesting that ICE may already be using Mobile Fortify for surveillance of protesters engaged in constitutionally protected speech,” the letter pointed out.

“The possibility ICE is using Mobile Fortify app to identify people exercising their First Amendment rights raises serious questions about the risks created by this app,” the groups said.

Mobile Fortify’s database access – combined with its ability to identify individuals in real time – raises “serious questions about the risks created by this app,” the organizations wrote, warning of a potentially chilling effect on free expression and association.

Despite the sweeping nature of the technology, ICE has never conducted a dedicated Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) for Mobile Fortify. Instead, the agency concluded that existing privacy documents, including the PIA for the Enforcement Integrated Database (EID), were sufficient.

Privacy advocates call that decision indefensible. EID was designed for “investigation subjects and/or individuals subject to removal” – people already known to ICE – not the broader population that ICE can now scan in public spaces “regardless of citizenship or immigration status.”

That data – including photos of U.S. citizens – is stored for 15 years.

The coalition is demanding that DHS suspend ICE’s use of Mobile Fortify, release all privacy analyses related to the app, and publicly clarify whether DHS’s Directive 026-11 – its most recent known policy – still governs the use of facial recognition.

That directive explicitly states that facial recognition “may not be used as the sole basis for law or civil enforcement related actions,” a standard ICE’s current practices appear to violate.

The concerns raised by civil liberties groups mirror those expressed by lawmakers. Earlier this month, Senator Edward Markey and three other senators sent a letter to ICE demanding it halt Mobile Fortify and answer longstanding questions about the app’s legal authority, accuracy, data retention policies, and contractor relationships.

They lawmakers cited multiple videos of ICE agents scanning individuals’ faces on public streets, including one in which an agent reportedly asked, “Can you do a facial?” before holding a smartphone inches from a young man’s face.

ICE has missed several congressional deadlines to explain the system’s legal basis and operational rules.

In the senators’ view, Mobile Fortify represents a major shift in federal biometric surveillance without congressional authorization or the safeguards normally expected for such powerful tools.

The organizations behind the new letter say the stakes extend far beyond immigration enforcement. Mobile Fortify, they warn, represents a dangerous template for how biometric identification tools can be normalized in American policing, especially when deployed by an agency with broad authority and limited public oversight.

“Such powerful surveillance technology at the hands of ICE field agents threatens privacy, civil liberties, and civil rights,” they wrote. “Videos online already show ICE agents aiming their phones at protestors.”

Article Topics

biometric matching  |  biometrics  |  facial recognition  |  ICE - U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement  |  law enforcement  |  mobile app  |  mobile biometrics  |  Mobile Fortify  |  U.S. Government