Senators demand ICE halt use of Mobile Fortify app amid growing privacy concerns

For the second time, Senator Edward J. Markey – now joined by three other senators – wrote Monday to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) acting director Todd Lyons demanding that he immediately halt ICE’s use of the mobile app known as Mobile Fortify.

The senators are pressing for full disclosure of the app’s legal basis, accuracy, and policy controls.

The letter follows a September 11 request by Markey to Lyons demanding that ICE cease its use of Mobile Fortify pending responses to detailed questions about its deployment.

That earlier letter had set an October 2 response deadline which ICE did not meet – a fact cited in the senators’ November follow-up letter.

“In September, we wrote to you demanding that ICE cease use of Mobile Fortify and requesting detailed information about its policies and practices surrounding the use of biometric technology,” the senators said.

Continuing, the four senators said, “We requested answers to our questions by October 2, but ICE has still not responded. This is unacceptable. ICE has a responsibility to timely answer congressional inquiries. We once again demand that ICE stop using Mobile Fortify app and request written responses to the questions in our September letter, a copy of which is attached to this letter, by November 10.”

In this latest letter, the senators reference newly surfaced videos in which ICE officers appear to scan individuals using a phone camera on U.S. public streets, a development they say demands immediate agency transparency and action.

“A new report provides clear evidence that ICE has not only developed advanced biometric technology but is actively using it to surveil and identify members of the public,” Monday’s letter says. “Three separate videos posted on social media captured ICE agents scanning the faces of individuals in the United States. In one video, federal agents appear to stop two young men without any clear justification.”

“When one of the men explains that he does not have identification documents with him, a federal agent asks ‘can you do a facial?’ and another agent then ‘points his own phone camera directly at him, hovering it over the boy’s face for a couple seconds,” the senators noted. “The officer then looks at his phone’s screen and asks the boy to verify his name. This exchange – along with the other videos – demonstrates that ICE is using facial recognition technology on U.S. streets for identity verification.”

“As we explained in our September letter, this expanded use of FRT creates serious privacy and civil liberties risks,” the senators continued. “Given this new reporting, we are reiterating our demand that ICE immediately cease using this app and renew our request for answers to our questions about ICE’s policies and practices surrounding the use of biometric technology.”

Mobile Fortify reportedly converts a standard government issued smartphone into a biometric capture device in which agents can point the camera at a person’s face or use contactless fingerprint capture, which can then be queried against a multitude of large federal biometric databases in real time.

Reports indicate the app piggybacks onto the Traveler Verification Service used by Customs and Border Protection, the Automated Biometric Identification System which stores hundreds of millions of biometric records, and other Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice databases.

In short, what was once a border checkpoint technology is now being repurposed for mobile field enforcement.

Critics, including civil liberties advocates, highlight multiple intersecting concerns. They say the app appears to operate in settings where individuals may not know their biometrics are being collected; that the reliability of the biometric matching under field conditions remains unclear; and that the legal and policy regimes governing its use are partially hidden.

ICE’s shift to “mobile, on-the-go biometric profiling” echoes border surveillance patterns now entering everyday public settings.

In their letters, the senators have repeatedly requested a range of information, including which contractors built the app, when it was first deployed, whether ICE conducted accuracy testing, what legal authority justifies its use domestically, what policies govern its use (including retention and deletion of biometric images), and whether ICE will commit to ending use of the system if the answers are unsatisfactory.

In the latest letter, the senators stressed that “this expanded use of facial recognition technology creates serious privacy and civil liberties risks” and that “the new videos provide clear evidence that ICE is using FRT on U.S. streets for identity verification.”

This episode illustrates a broader trajectory in which the deployment of biometric and AI-driven surveillance technologies once reserved for border control or national security contexts is increasingly being migrated into domestic law enforcement and immigration enforcement settings.

The capability to convert a smartphone into a biometric scanner widens the terrain of surveillance, potentially enabling identity verification in neighborhoods, transit hubs, protests, and other public places.

The app reportedly allows near instant biometric matching and flags ICE’s ability to use such tools without fully visible oversight or policy guardrails. Moreover, the apparent lack of full transparency around the app’s origin, deployment timeline, testing records, and data retention practices adds to concerns.

Critically, while federal law enforcement agencies typically operate under warrant or other constrained regimes when deploying biometric surveillance, immigration enforcement under ICE often operates under different standards, raising questions about how identifications, scans, and data matching are subject to constitutional protections.

If ICE cannot satisfactorily account for the app’s legal basis, accuracy testing, and policy governance, the senators’ pressure could lead to embarrassing congressional hearings, legislative proposals to limit federal biometric surveillance, or stricter agency level moratoria.

It also could open litigation over Fourth Amendment protections, especially in cases where a wrongly flagged individual was detained following a match. Civil liberties groups warn of the chilling effect of biometric scanning in public places.

For ICE, the question is whether it halts the use of Mobile Fortify voluntarily, offers transparency and policy revisions, or faces more aggressive legislative or judicial pushes.

For the public, this unfolding story serves as a bellwether of how quickly and quietly advanced surveillance technologies can shift from the fringe into everyday enforcement, often without broad public debate.

By demanding that ICE not only stop using the Mobile Fortify app but also open the books on its deployment, testing, policy, legal authority and contracts, the senators aim to wrest public scrutiny over a biometric enforcement tool that operates at the intersection of immigration, surveillance and civil liberties risk.

And in so doing, they are drawing a line around the question of how far federal biometric surveillance should penetrate U.S. streets and under what rules.

Article Topics

biometric matching  |  biometrics  |  DHS  |  facial recognition  |  ICE  |  law enforcement  |  mobile app  |  Mobile Fortify  |  real-time biometrics  |  U.S. Government