By Bianca Castillo
Following a significant increase in funding in July 2025, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has substantially expanded its deployment of advanced surveillance technologies.[1] As the nation’s most heavily funded law enforcement agency, ICE has invested in tools including biometric trackers, mobile phone location databases, and social media monitoring programs.[2] This technological expansion coincides with the Trump Administration’s mass deportation initiatives and subsequent nationwide protests, raising significant concerns regarding Fourth Amendment protections and individual privacy.
One of the most material tools in ICE’s expanded arsenal is a facial recognition program called Mobile Fortify, a mobile app that allows agents in the field to upload the face and fingerprint scans of a person.[3] After the person’s key facial features are converted into a digital profile, the profile is compared against a variety of government databases containing 200 million images. The system then reports possible matches.
In a statement to The Washington Post, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has asserted the existence of “formal privacy oversight” regulating the use of Mobile Fortify, with “strict limits” on data access, use, and retention.[4] However, an internal DHS document obtained by 404 Media states that people cannot decline to be scanned, and these facial scans will be stored for 15 years, regardless of citizenship or immigration status.[5]
Predictably, ICE’s use of Mobile Fortify has not come without legal scrutiny. According to a lawsuit filed by the State of Illinois and City of Chicago in January 2026, ICE has utilized Mobile Fortify in the field more than 100,000 times, constituting a major expansion in the technology’s use. Previously, the agency had limited facial recognition technology to ports of entry and investigations of child sexual exploitation. The plaintiffs argue that ICE’s growing use of biometric tracking violates state privacy laws, including Illinois’s Biometric Information Privacy Act, and exceeds the agency’s statutory authority by enabling “unwarranted collection and retention of biometric and personal information.”[6]
Civil liberties organizations have expressed concerns, urging DHS to prohibit ICE from employing Mobile Fortify in field operations. These groups argue that facial recognition technology is excessively intrusive and may deter lawful protest. Reportedly, ICE agents can conduct a “Super Query” on a scanned individual, granting access to data associated with people, vehicles, addresses, travel records, and additional information. Furthermore, these organizations emphasize persistent accuracy issues with facial recognition, particularly for women and people of color, which is especially problematic given that ICE may treat a positive face verification as conclusive evidence of immigration status.[7]
Beyond biometric surveillance, ICE can access commercial location data through its September 2025 subscription to Penlink, a commercial data-analysis platform. Penlink provides access to large amounts of mobile phone location data. The technology system allows agents to “geofence” a specific area and identify all cell phones within its range, thus giving ICE the ability to track the movements and locations of these phones and their owners over time.[8]
According to an internal ICE legal analysis, the agency claims that this commercial location data can be queried without a warrant because the data is obtained from third-party vendors rather than directly from telecommunications providers.[9] However, privacy advocates argue against this rationale, asserting that this practice is in direct violation of Carpenter v. United States, in which the US Supreme Court held that mobile phone location data revealed so much about people’s lives that, under the Fourth Amendment, authorities need a warrant to access it from phone companies.[10] Critics maintain that allowing government agencies to loophole Carpenter by purchasing location data on the market would render the decision effectively meaningless.[11]
In response, many are calling upon Congress to pass the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act (FANFSA), which would essentially close the “data broker loophole” and require the government to obtain a judicial warrant before accessing sensitive commercial data.[12] In 2024, the proposed legislation passed the House on a bipartisan basis, but the Senate never took up the bill. Nevertheless, privacy advocates ask Congress to reintroduce the bill and prevent ICE from circumventing Fourth Amendment privacy protection.
Ongoing litigation and proposed legislation indicate that ICE’s surveillance methods may soon face judicial and congressional scrutiny. As courts and legislators address these technologies, immigration enforcement presents the critical opportunity to assess whether existing privacy protections can meaningfully regulate digital surveillance.
Bianca Castillo is a 2L at Vanderbilt Law School from San Antonio, Texas. Before law school, she studied public health, political science, and Spanish at Vanderbilt University.
[1] One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Pub. L. No. 119-21, 139 Stat. 75 (2025).
[2] See Sheera Frenkel & Aaron Krolik, How ICE Already Knows Who Minneapolis Protestors Are, N.Y. Times (Jan. 30, 2026), https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/technology/tech-ice-facial-recognition-palantir.html.
[3] See Joseph Cox, ICE Is Using a New Facial Recognition App to Identify People, Leaked Emails Show, 404 Media (June 26, 2025), https://www.404media.co/ice-is-using-a-new-facial-recognition-app-to-identify-people-leaked-emails-show/.
[4] Eva Dou, Artur Galocha & Kevin Schaul, The Powerful Tools in ICE’s Arsenal to Track Suspects — and Protesters, Wash. Post (Jan. 29, 2026), https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2026/ice-surveillance-immigrants-protesters/.
[5] Joseph Cox, You Can’t Refuse to Be Scanned by ICE’s Facial Recognition App, DHS Document Says, 404 Media (Oct. 31, 2025), https://www.404media.co/you-cant-refuse-to-be-scanned-by-ices-facial-recognition-app-dhs-document-says/.
[6] Complaint at 30, 33, Illinois v. U.S. Dep’t of Homeland Sec., No. 26-cv-321 (N.D. Ill. Jan. 12, 2026).
[7] See Letter from Access Now et al. to Roman Jankowski, Chief Priv. Officer, U.S. Dep’t of Homeland Sec. (Nov. 25, 2025) (on file with author).
[8] See Joseph Cox, Inside ICE’s Tool to Monitor Phones in Entire Neighborhoods, 404 Media (Jan. 8, 2026), https://www.404media.co/inside-ices-tool-to-monitor-phones-in-entire-neighborhoods/.
[9] Id.
[10] Carpenter v. United States, 585 U.S. 296 (2018).
[11] See Anika Venkatesh & Lauren Yu, DHS is Circumventing Constitution by Buying Data it Would Normally Need a Warrant to Access, ACLU (Jan. 12, 2026), https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/dhs-is-circumventing-constitution-by-buying-data-it-would-normally-need-a-warrant-to-access.
[12] Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act, H.R. 4639, 118th Cong. (2023).