ICE and CBP Face Scrutiny Over Facial Recognition Technology
A bill was introduced by Senate Democrats that would ban Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) from using facial recognition technology, according to Ars Technica. The "ICE Out of Our Faces Act" aims to prevent covered immigration officers from acquiring, possessing, accessing, or using any biometric surveillance system, or information derived from such a system.
The proposed ban extends beyond facial recognition to encompass other biometric surveillance technologies, such as voice recognition. All data collected from such systems in the past would be deleted under the bill.
This legislative action comes amid growing concerns about the effectiveness and potential misuse of facial recognition technology by immigration enforcement agencies. Wired reported that the face-recognition app Mobile Fortify, used by ICE and CBP, is not designed to reliably identify people in the streets and was deployed without proper scrutiny.
According to Wired, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) launched Mobile Fortify in the spring of 2025 to determine or verify the identities of individuals stopped or detained by DHS officers during federal operations. DHS explicitly linked the rollout to an executive order, signed by President Donald Trump, which called for a crackdown on undocumented immigrants.
The records reviewed by Wired indicated that Mobile Fortify was not designed for reliable identification in public settings, raising questions about its accuracy and potential for misidentification.
The bill to ban the use of facial recognition technology by ICE and CBP is currently under consideration in the Senate.
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