Lawsuit casts new light on ICE, CBP’s expanding biometric, visual surveillance dragnet

A sweeping 103-page federal lawsuit filed by the State of Illinois and the City of Chicago against the Trump administration offers the most detailed public accounting to date of how biometric identification tools and visual surveillance practices originally developed for border processing have been redeployed deep inside the United States.

The complaint describes how those technologies have migrated far from ports of entry, transforming routine street encounters, protests, and interactions with bystanders into sites of data capture and long-term federal retention.

The complaint, filed January 12 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois Eastern Division, alleges that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol agents deployed to Chicago and surrounding areas have engaged in widespread, suspicionless collection of biometric identifiers using mobile facial recognition and fingerprint scanning tools.

It further alleges that agents have simultaneously photographed, recorded, and documented bystanders and protestors during enforcement actions and crowd responses, folding visual surveillance into routine immigration operations across public spaces.

Illinois and Chicago argue that these practices exceed the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) statutory authority, violate state constitutional privacy protections, and represent a fundamental break from decades of federal limits on interior immigration enforcement.

“We have watched in horror as unchecked federal agents have aggressively assaulted and terrorized our communities and neighborhoods in Illinois, undermining Constitutional rights and threatening public safety,” said Governor JB Pritzker.

“Border Patrol agents and ICE officers have acted as occupiers rather than officers of the law,” added Attorney General Kwame Raoul.

Minnesota officials meanwhile filed a parallel federal lawsuit against the Trump administration which also describes a surveillance heavy enforcement posture in which masked federal agents conduct “consensual” street encounters, demand proof of citizenship, record interactions, and create fear that any public presence may result in detention.

At the center of the biometric allegations in the Illinois lawsuit is a DHS mobile application known as Mobile Fortify, a smartphone-based tool Biometric Update has extensively reported on that allows agents in the field to capture facial images and fingerprints, and to instantly query multiple federal biometric databases.

According to the lawsuit, Mobile Fortify compares newly captured images against systems that include Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) Traveler Verification Service, Border Patrol enforcement databases, and the Office of Biometric Identity Management’s Automated Biometric Identification System, which stores immigration histories and prior DHS encounters.

The lawsuit situates Mobile Fortify within the broader evolution of DHS biometric infrastructure. Congress originally authorized DHS to develop a biometric entry-exit system to track noncitizens entering and leaving the U.S. at ports of entry.

That system, operationalized as the Traveler Verification Service, underwent years of pilot programs, rulemaking, and privacy review.

CBP acknowledged that biometric collection was inherently privacy sensitive and imposed safeguards, including limits on data retention and opt-out rights for U.S. citizens whose identities could otherwise be verified through documents.

Illinois and Chicago argue that those constraints were abandoned as biometric tools migrated from ports of entry to city streets. Unlike TVS, Mobile Fortify is not confined to border crossings or inspection zones.

DHS policy documents cited in the complaint authorize agents to use the app whenever they “encounter an individual or associates of that individual,” even when officers do not know the person’s citizenship status and lack individualized suspicion of unlawful presence.

The complaint alleges that DHS launched Mobile Fortify around June 2025 and has since used it more than 100,000 times nationwide, including extensively during interior enforcement operations in Illinois.

Unlike earlier biometric programs, DHS does not provide individuals with the opportunity to decline biometric capture, does not distinguish between citizens and noncitizens at the point of collection, and retains all facial images and fingerprints for 15 years regardless of whether the encounter results in arrest or removal proceedings

Illinois and Chicago describe this as a sharp departure from statutory limits that authorize biometric collection inside the U.S. only after a removal proceeding has been initiated. Instead, the lawsuit alleges, biometric identification has been inverted into a first-step enforcement tool, allowing agents to photograph, scan, and resolve identity before determining whether any lawful basis for detention exists.

The complaint documents multiple incidents in which federal agents allegedly used Mobile Fortify on U.S. citizens in Illinois. In one case, agents detained a Chicago resident, Jesus Gutierrez, after he told officers he was a U.S. citizen but did not have identification on him.

The agents allegedly handcuffed him, placed him in an unmarked vehicle, and scanned his face using Mobile Fortify before confirming his citizenship and releasing him.

In another incident, Border Patrol agents stopped two teenagers near a high school in Aurora, Illinois. When one teenager said he was a U.S. citizen but lacked ID, an agent asked another, “Can you do facial?” and pointed a phone at the teenager’s face, appearing to capture a biometric image for database comparison.

A separate encounter involved agents ordering a man to remove his hat so they could photograph his face and “run” his information through federal systems despite his assertion that he was an American citizen.

These encounters, Illinois argues, illustrate how smartphones have become front-line biometric instruments, collapsing the line between questioning, identification, and enforcement.

The lawsuit emphasizes that DHS retains all biometric data collected through Mobile Fortify, including data from U.S. citizens, for 15 years, creating what Illinois describes as a de facto interior biometric registry untethered from warrants, consent, or individualized suspicion.

The complaint also places the expansion of biometric surveillance in the context of DHS’s rollback of internal safeguards.

In 2023, DHS issued Directive 026-11, which imposed department-wide requirements on the use of facial recognition and face capture technologies, including bias testing, oversight by privacy and civil rights offices, and opt-out rights for U.S. citizens for non-law-enforcement uses.

The lawsuit says DHS rescinded the directive on or before February 14, 2025, removing what it had previously described as the most extensive facial recognition safeguards of any federal agency. Directive 026-11 has been removed from DHS’s website, but it can be read here.

Alongside biometric capture, the lawsuit also details extensive use of cameras and photographic recording equipment during enforcement operations and public disturbances.

While the complaint does not allege the use of fixed surveillance cameras or drones, it repeatedly references agents using phones, body-worn cameras, and vehicle-mounted recording systems to document encounters with bystanders, journalists, and protestors.

Body-worn camera footage plays a central role in the complaint’s account of crowd control incidents following enforcement actions and shootings. In multiple instances, video captured by agents themselves later contradicted DHS’s public claims that crowds were violent or posed imminent threats.

Following the shooting of a Chicago resident in Brighton Park, body-camera footage documented agents pointing weapons at gathered residents and journalists before deploying pepper balls and tear gas without warning.

In another incident, body-worn camera footage captured agents anticipating the use of chemical agents against protestors, with recorded statements such as “We’re definitely gassing them when we leave,” undermining later assertions that force was necessary to secure safe egress.

Federal judges reviewing this footage concluded that crowds were largely peaceful and that agents escalated force without justification, relying in part on visual evidence gathered during the incidents.

The complaint also references agents photographing and recording scenes during protests and neighborhood gatherings that followed enforcement actions. In several Chicago neighborhoods, residents and journalists assembled after arrests or shootings, only to be met with masked agents who recorded interactions, deployed crowd control weapons, and documented the aftermath through cameras embedded in vehicles or worn on their bodies.

Illinois does not allege that these recordings were themselves biometric in every instance, but it situates them within a broader surveillance posture in which visual documentation, identity resolution, and enforcement authority blur together.

In public spaces, the complaint argues, residents cannot distinguish whether a phone or camera is recording evidence, capturing biometric identifiers, or feeding long-term intelligence databases.

Legally, Illinois grounds its challenge in state constitutional and statutory protections that treat biometric identifiers as uniquely sensitive. The Illinois Constitution explicitly protects residents against invasions of privacy; a provision courts have interpreted more broadly than the federal Fourth Amendment.

The complaint argues that compelled facial photography and fingerprinting absent a warrant or individualized suspicion violates these protections, particularly given the state’s concern that new technologies could be used to construct general information banks about residents.

Illinois law further recognizes biometric identifiers as private information subject to strict regulation, including limits on collection, retention, and disclosure. By capturing and retaining biometric data through Mobile Fortify without consent or statutory authorization, the lawsuit alleges, DHS has overridden Illinois policy choices designed to prevent precisely this form of mass biometric surveillance.

More broadly, the complaint frames biometric and visual surveillance as tools of coercion that interfere with Illinois’ ability to govern. Residents, it argues, have been deterred from attending school, seeking medical care, participating in court proceedings, or exercising their rights to protest out of fear that any public appearance could result in questioning, photography, or entry into federal databases.

By embedding biometric identification and pervasive recording into routine street encounters and protest responses, Illinois and Chicago argue, DHS has constructed an interior surveillance and enforcement architecture that Congress never authorized, and the public never consented to.

The lawsuit seeks to halt what it describes as an unlawful expansion of biometric and visual surveillance far from the border, warning that if left unchecked, the same tools designed for ports of entry will continue to redefine everyday life in American cities.

If the case proceeds, it is likely to become a defining test of whether states can invoke their own constitutional privacy protections to resist the federal government’s expanding use of biometric identification and camera-based surveillance in the interior of the United States.

Article Topics

biometric identifiers  |  biometrics  |  CBP  |  data collection  |  ICE  |  immigration  |  law enforcement  |  lawsuits  |  U.S. Government  |  United States