Lawmakers challenge ICE surveillance expansion as questions mount over DHS oversight

U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree last week introduced legislation aimed at curbing what she and civil liberties advocates describe as an expanding pattern of surveillance and intimidation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) against peaceful observers, bystanders, and community members documenting immigration enforcement actions.

The Stop ICE Intimidation Act would block funding for expanded ICE surveillance tools and staffing until the agency provides Congress with detailed disclosures about how it uses databases and biometric technologies, including facial recognition, who is targeted, how long data is retained, and whether those practices comply with constitutional protections and state and local laws.

The bill would also freeze ICE’s contract with Clearview AI until lawmakers receive assurances that observers, bystanders, and protestors are not being swept into immigration enforcement databases.

Only days earlier, a handful of Senate Democrats introduced legislation that would ban ICE and CBP’s use of facial recognition technology.

Pingree said her legislation was driven by reports from Maine and elsewhere describing federal agents photographing observers, collecting license plate data, and issuing verbal threats to individuals engaged in lawful observation.

In one widely circulated incident in South Portland, a federal agent photographed a woman’s license plate after she filmed ICE officers and told her, “We have a nice little database, and now you’re considered a domestic terrorist.”

“When a federal agent can photograph someone’s license plate, add them to a database, and label them a domestic terrorist simply for filming ICE officers, we’ve crossed a dangerous line,” Pingree said.

She argued that the Trump administration and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have overseen the rapid expansion of surveillance tools that are now being used not only for immigration enforcement, but to intimidate lawful dissent.

The legislation arrives as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Inspector General (IG) conducts multiple oversight reviews examining immigration enforcement programs, including how DHS manages biometric data and personally identifiable information tied to enforcement operations.

The inspector general’s office confirmed it is actively reviewing DHS’s management, sharing, and security of biometric and personal data collected during immigration enforcement, along with ICE’s hiring, training, use of force investigations, and safeguards meant to prevent the arrest of U.S. citizens.

The IG noted that while it cannot provide firm timelines for completion, it has mechanisms to alert DHS leadership and Congress if it uncovers serious risks or threats during its work.

One ongoing review specifically examines how DHS components collect and manage biometric identifiers and personal data related to immigration enforcement, an issue central to Pingree’s legislation.

Civil liberties advocates argue the oversight reviews underscore longstanding transparency gaps surrounding ICE’s expanding surveillance capabilities.

Recent reporting has documented ICE’s use of facial recognition software from Clearview AI, iris-scanning tools capable of identifying individuals in seconds, and large-scale data-sharing arrangements that pull information from systems containing tax, health, and immigration-related records.

Advocates warn that some of these systems may include U.S. citizens who never consented to inclusion in immigration databases.

That oversight role, however, has become the subject of a new political and legal dispute. In a letter sent to Noem this week, Tammy Duckworth disclosed that DHS’s general counsel warned the inspector general’s office that the secretary claims authority to unilaterally shut down IG investigations.

Duckworth said she learned of the warning during a meeting with DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari and wrote that DHS general counsel had communicated multiple times with the IG’s office to “remind them” of that asserted power.

Duckworth also said she was told that on January 29, the inspector general’s office was asked to disclose “every active audit, inspection and criminal investigation,” a request she characterized as “extremely unusual, perhaps even unprecedented.”

She warned that repeated pressure from DHS leadership may already have weakened the office’s operational independence, pointing to what she described as a lack of visible IG engagement following the fatal shooting of U.S. citizen Alex Pretti by Border Patrol agents.

The DHS inspector general’s office has publicly stated that its mission is to “provide objective, independent oversight of DHS programs and operations and to promote excellence, integrity, and accountability within DHS.”

As part of that work, the IG’s office said it is reviewing immigration enforcement efforts to assess compliance with federal law, DHS policy, and civil rights obligations.

Those reviews include ICE hiring and training practices, processes designed to prevent the arrest of U.S. citizens, conditions at ICE detention facilities, and the use of Border Patrol agents in cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis.

Former Interior Department Inspector General Mark Greenblatt said the Inspector General Act of 1978 does allow a cabinet secretary to prohibit an inspector general from carrying out or completing an investigation if the secretary believed it would threaten national security.

However, Greenblatt said that authority is rarely invoked.

“In my experience, that provision has never been invoked by any agency across the federal government,” said Greenblatt, who was nominated by President Donald Trump during his first administration and later fired at the start of Trump’s second term.

Greenblatt also noted that if an investigation is shut down, the statute requires the decision to be reported to Congress within 30 days, including the rationale and whether the inspector general supported it.

Greenblatt said inspectors general routinely notify agency leadership about ongoing audits, many of which are public, but described requests to disclose ongoing criminal investigations to cabinet-level officials as highly irregular. “The FBI doesn’t tell everyone what they are investigating in advance,” he said.

DHS defended Noem’s authority in a statement issued by Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, who said the legal provision Duckworth cited has existed for decades.

For Pingree and other critics of ICE’s surveillance practices, the dispute underscores the urgency of legislative intervention.

Pingree’s office says Mainers have reported being followed home, contacted on their personal phones, and threatened after documenting enforcement actions during expanded ICE operations, including an initiative known as “Catch of the Day.”

The Stop ICE Intimidation Act asserts that such surveillance of observers raises serious First and Fourth Amendment concerns and conditions future funding on ICE certifying that its practices do not target lawful bystanders.

Pingree has also backed broader reforms to ICE operations, including requirements for body cameras, judicial warrants for enforcement actions, limits on agents concealing their identities, independent investigations into use-of-force incidents, and safeguards to prevent the detention or deportation of U.S. citizens.

She is among more than 160 members of Congress who have signed articles of impeachment against Noem, citing alleged abuses of authority within the Department of Homeland Security.

Whether the bill advances or not, the legislation places ICE’s surveillance practices and DHS’s internal oversight mechanisms under intensified congressional scrutiny at a moment when both are already the subject of active inspector general reviews and growing constitutional concern.

Article Topics

biometric data  |  biometric identifiers  |  biometrics  |  Clearview AI  |  DHS  |  facial recognition  |  ICE - U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement  |  immigration  |  law enforcement  |  legislation  |  U.S. Government