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mass deportations
ICE's 'Frightening' Facial Recognition App is Scanning US Citizens Without Their Consent
"An ICE officer may ignore evidence of American citizenship—including a birth certificate—if the app says the person is an alien," said the ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee.
Nov 01, 2025
Immigration agents are using facial recognition software as "definitive" evidence to determine immigration status and is collecting data from US citizens without their consent. In some cases, agents may detain US citizens, including ones who can provide their birth certificates, if the app says they are in the country illegally.
These are a few of the findings from a series of articles published this past week by 404 Media, which has obtained documents and video evidence showing that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents are using a smartphone app in the field during immigration stops, scanning the faces of people on the street to verify their citizenship.
The report found that agents frequently conduct stops that "seem to have little justification beyond the color of someone’s skin... then look up more information on that person, including their identity and potentially their immigration status."
While it is not clear what application the agencies are using, 404 previously reported that ICE is using an app called Mobile Fortify that allows ICE to simply point a camera at a person on the street. The photos are then compared with a bank of more than 200 million images and dozens of government databases to determine info about the person, including their name, date of birth, nationality, and information about their immigration status.
On Friday, 404 published an internal document from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) which stated that "ICE does not provide the opportunity for individuals to decline or consent to the collection and use of biometric data/photograph collection." The document also states that the image of any face that agents scan, including those of US citizens, will be stored for 15 years.
The outlet identified several videos that have been posted to social media of immigration officials using the technology.
In one, taken in Chicago, armed agents in sunglasses and face coverings are shown accosting a pair of Hispanic teenagers on bicycles, asking where they are from. The 16-year-old boy who filmed the encounter said he is "from here"—an American citizen—but that he only has a school ID on him. The officer tells the boy he'll be allowed to leave if he'll "do a facial." The other officer then snaps a photo of him with a phone camera and asks his name.
In another video, also in Chicago, agents are shown surrounding a driver, who declines to show his ID. Without asking, one officer points his phone at the man. "I’m an American citizen, so leave me alone,” the driver says. "Alright, we just got to verify that,” the officer responds.
Even if the people approached in these videos had produced identification proving their citizenship, there's no guarantee that agents would have accepted it, especially if the app gave them information to the contrary.
On Wednesday, ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), told 404 that ICE agents will even trust the app's results over a person's government documents.
“ICE officials have told us that an apparent biometric match by Mobile Fortify is a ‘definitive’ determination of a person’s status and that an ICE officer may ignore evidence of American citizenship—including a birth certificate—if the app says the person is an alien,” he said.
This is despite the fact that, as Nathan Freed Wessler, deputy director of the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, told 404, “face recognition technology is notoriously unreliable, frequently generating false matches and resulting in a number of known wrongful arrests across the country."
Thompson said: "ICE using a mobile biometrics app in ways its developers at CBP never intended or tested is a frightening, repugnant, and unconstitutional attack on Americans’ rights and freedoms.”
According to an investigation published in October by ProPublica, more than 170 US citizens have been detained by immigration agents, often in squalid conditions, since President Donald Trump returned to office in January. In many of these cases, these individuals have been detained because agents wrongly claimed the documents proving their citizenship are false.
During a press conference this week, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem denied this reality, stating that "no American citizens have been arrested or detained" as part of Trump's "mass deportation" crusade.
"We focus on those who are here illegally," she said.
But as DHS's internal document explains, facial recognition software is necessary in the first place because "ICE agents do not know an individual's citizenship at the time of the initial encounter."
David Bier, the director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, explains that the use of such technology suggests that ICE's operations are not "highly targeted raids," as it likes to portray, but instead "random fishing expeditions."
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How Many Laws Will Trump Break to Make America Predominantly White Again?
Much of Trump’s domestic and foreign policy can be understood only by examining them through the lens of his obsession with deporting people and restricting immigration from non-white parts of the world.
Oct 25, 2025
The Trump administration aspires to deport a million people in its first year of office. The president has also spoken of the more ambitious goal of deporting 15-20 million undocumented people overall, even if that category probably covers only 14 million folks. The discrepancy of a couple million people shouldn’t bother President Donald Trump. He’s happy to deport those with green cards, H-1B visas, and even American citizens.
Deporting a million people in a year is a heavy lift. The previous record, 409,849 people, was during the Obama administration, as part of the 1.5 million deportations he conducted in his first term. Trump, no doubt, wants to best Barack Obama in this category, since he’s determined to outshine the former president in every respect, even the dubious ones.
Despite all the high-profile seizures by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the deals to dump Venezuelans to Salvadoran prisons, and the truly crazy efforts to send people to countries they’ve never even visited like Eswatini and South Sudan, the Trump administration has managed to deport only about 350,000 people through the end of August. That includes the 200,000 by ICE and the rest by Customs and Border Protection and the Coast Guard, plus some self-deportations. Another 60,000 are languishing in ICE detention centers. The government is currently monitoring about 180,000 families and individuals in its Alternatives to Detention program, which may end up becoming a Preparation for Deportation program.
Most of the people currently in detention—over 70%—have never committed any crime, which undermines the claim by the Trump administration that he’s going after the “bad hombres.”
German citizens failed to stop the Nazis. Will Americans stand up and be counted?
Detention is pretty much a fast track to deportation. After all, detainees often don’t have access to lawyers. As the American Prospect reports, “ICE uses bureaucracy and location transfers to isolate their detainees from both their families and their lawyers, limiting their ability to get out of their predicaments and increasing misery and hopelessness.” One immigration lawyer told me that some of his clients have disappeared for several days in ICE detention—and these included people who were willing to self-deport.
Trump is not close to meeting his ambitious deportation goals. That’s no comfort to all the immigrants whose lives he has already upended.
ICE Is Not Nice
The scenes involving the roundup of refugees and migrants have been harrowing. Consider this description:
Buses backed up to apartment buildings and were filled with screaming, crying people. Hospital beds were emptied. A cancer patient operated on the previous day was carried away. One woman gave birth while police waited to haul off mother and baby. Younger children were permitted to be left behind, and many parents desperately accepted that choice in the hope that neighbors or orphanages would take them in.
Oh, I’m sorry, I got mixed up. That’s a description of the French police rounding up 13,000 Jewish refugees in 1942 at the behest of their Nazi overseers, as reported by David Wyman in his seminal book, The Abandonment of the Jews.
Here, by comparison, are three snapshots of recent ICE actions:
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have in recent days deported the Cuban-born mother of a 1-year-old girl—separating them indefinitely—and three children ages 2, 4, and 7 who are US citizens along with their Honduran-born mothers, their lawyers said Saturday.
In Chicago:
Agents used unmarked trucks and a helicopter to surround the five-story apartment building. NewsNation, which was invited to observe the operation, reported agents “rappelled from Black Hawk helicopters.” Agents then went door to door, woke up residents, and used zip ties to restrain them. Residents and the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, which canvassed the area, said those who were zip tied included children and US citizens.
In New York:
On the morning of September 4, dozens of masked federal agents raided a snack bar factory in the small town of Cato, New York. They claimed there was a “violent felon” in the plant, but proceeded to siphon off and hold anyone who looked Latinx. At least 69 workers were initially detained, with 57 still in custody or deported, though some say that could be an undercount. There are multiple reports of aggression—knees on necks, blows to heads—used during the raid.
This is happening not just to the undocumented and those on the rock-strewn path to citizenship. Quite a few American citizens have also been caught up in the ICE dragnet. At least 170 have been detained, according to ProPublica:
Americans have been dragged, tackled, beaten, tased, and shot by immigration agents. They’ve had their necks kneeled on. They’ve been held outside in the rain while in their underwear. At least three citizens were pregnant when agents detained them. One of those women had already had the door of her home blown off while Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem watched. About two dozen Americans have said they were held for more than a day without being able to phone lawyers or loved ones.
Much of Trump’s domestic and foreign policy can be understood only by examining them through the lens of his obsession with deporting people and restricting immigration from non-white parts of the world. The question remains: How many laws will the Trump administration break and how many crimes will it commit in this effort to make America predominantly white again?
German citizens failed to stop the Nazis. Will Americans stand up and be counted?
Trump’s Immigration-Obsessed Foreign Policy
In exchange for a payment of about $5 million, the tiny country of Eswatini in southern Africa has agreed to receive up to 160 deportees from a variety of countries. Human rights groups in Eswatini, formerly Swaziland, have challenged the arrangement in court. A US District Court judge also blocked the removal of deportees to third countries back in April, but the Supreme Court lifted that ban in June.
The $5 million is only part of the sweetheart deal. In August, the Trump administration waived all tariffs on Eswatini goods entering the United States—in contrast to the 30% rate that South Africa will be paying. A number of countries hoping for tariff reductions or similarly favorable treatment from the Trump administration—Costa Rica, Guatemala, Kosovo, Panama, Rwanda, South Sudan—have also accepted the transport of deportees.
Eswatini does have its limits. It refused to accept Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran national that the Trump administration sent to a prison in El Salvador. Garcia was freed and sent back to the States, only to be arrested again by the US government and charged with human trafficking. Afraid that Garcia will be released by court order, the Trump administration is scrambling to find some country that will take him. Garcia is living proof of the administration’s lies—contrary to what Trump has said, he is not a gang member or a human trafficker. No wonder Trump wants him out of the country.
He has put a sign on America’s front door that reads: Wealthy, Christian, Right-Wing Whites Only.
El Salvador has been an enthusiastic backer of Trump’s deportation plans. The country received $5 million to house deportees like Garcia in its horrific prisons. In addition, the State Department recently gave the country its highest safety rating, ahead of France and Spain. Trump has also backed Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s bid to become the country’s leader for life. Finally, the country faces a mere 10% tariff on its goods, Trump’s lowest tier.
In one of the least savory parts of the arrangement with El Salvador, Secretary of State Marco Rubio cut a deal with Bukele to return several members of the MS-13 gang who were cooperating with US authorities. Bukele wanted them back because they had information about members of his administration who had cut their own deals with the country’s various gangs. It’s best to keep your enemies close, as the expression goes, particularly if you can put them in a dangerous high-security prison.
The immigration issue also affects relations with Venezuela, where the Trump administration has used the threat of Tren de Aragua, and the alleged inroads the gang has made in US society, to step up its efforts to topple the government of Nicolas Maduro.
Trump has attempted to tilt immigration policy in favor of English speakers and white people more generally, even as the overall quotas for immigrants are radically reduced from 125,000 per year to 7,500. Among the proposals considered by the administration is one that would give preference to such groups as Europeans who support the radical right and white Afrikaners from South Africa. The overall purpose is a reduction in American diversity because, as one of the internal proposals argues, “The sharp increase in diversity has reduced the level of social trust essential for the functioning of a democratic polity.”
The administration has also radically increased the fee for a work permit—the H-1B visa—to $100,000. Although there are some exemptions to the new fee, it is clearly designed to restrict entrance to the United States to the wealthy.
Taken together, Trump has treated the “shithole” countries he identified in his first term—the poorer countries of the Global South—as dumping grounds for undesirable elements. And he has put a sign on America’s front door that reads: Wealthy, Christian, Right-Wing Whites Only.
Barack Obama wanted to create an administration that looked like America. Donald Trump wants to create an America that looks like his administration.
How Deportations Shape Domestic Policy
Trump knows a hot-button issue when he touches one, and immigration remains a great way to defeat Democrats who, however anti-immigration some of them have become, will never stoop to the race-baiting lows that Trump uses to wow his supporters. The invading “army” of migrants approaching the Mexico border, the fictitious pet eaters of Springfield, Ohio, the “murderers” and “rapists” from points south responsible for all the crime in America: These mendacious memes propelled Trump to victory in 2024.
His immigration policies are no surprise: They were all laid out in detail in Project 2025: stopping refugee resettlement; ending Temporary Protect Status for Haitians, Venezuelans, and others; ending visas for foreign students. Trump has gone further. Even Project 2025 didn’t propose revoking birthright citizenship and ignoring the Constitution.
The militarization of the United States, at the expense of social welfare, is now directed not just at China or securing access to critical raw materials: it is directed at the US population.
Trump has put ICE raids at the center of his approach, but there has been pushback from Democratic-controlled cities and states. So, the president is sending in the National Guard to ensure greater access and mobility for ICE agents. The use of the US military for domestic operations is unprecedented, of course, and several judges have ruled the president’s actions unconstitutional. Trump, meanwhile, has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to suppress “rebellion,” which would allow him to use the military to impose civilian law (his government’s laws). It’s not quite martial law—which is the imposition of military laws on civilians—but it certainly aims in that direction (and the two may well be conflated in Trump’s mind).
ICE, meanwhile, has received a huge surge in funding—$170 billion in new money—at a time of cutbacks in virtually all non-military parts of the federal government. If ICE and associated agencies constituted a military, it would be the 13th largest one in the world, as Sarah Lazare and Lindsay Koshgarian point out. The militarization of the United States, at the expense of social welfare, is now directed not just at China or securing access to critical raw materials: it is directed at the US population.
Trump is attacking diversity more generally, as the changes in federal immigration policy suggest. Because birthright citizenship has changed the demographics of the United States, its repeal has been a priority for white nationalists, and they have also cheered Trump’s moves in this direction. Meanwhile, the president is going after diversity in federal institutions, federal grantmaking, and across the US educational system.
At the moment, lawyers and judges are the thin line that holds back the lawlessness of the Trump administration. A few civic groups like the Immigration Defense Project and Freedom for Immigrants are fighting the administration. But it will require a lot more public outcry to defend America’s disappeared and preserve diversity in this country.
As Bad as Nazis?
The Nazis were also obsessed with the diversity of German society in the 1930s. They ultimately decided not just to stigmatize and imprison Jews, Roma, homosexuals, and others. The Nazis killed them in huge numbers.
Trump and his white nationalist allies are currently at the stigmatize and deport stage. They’re content for the moment to let the killing take place elsewhere. The administration is not only erecting higher walls against refugees and immigrants—leading to more deaths among the desperate overseas—it is sending those who thought they’d already made it to safety to warzones (South Sudan), certain imprisonment (Afghanistan, Russia), and failed states (Haiti).
The US business community is heavily reliant on immigrant labor, much of it undocumented, in agriculture, construction, and the food industry. But it has failed to stand up for its immigrant workforce. The international community is busy making deals with Trump, not censuring him. Congress has been largely silent (though it recently announced an inquiry into ICE treatment of US citizens).
At a time when countries around the world are shrinking in population, the United States has remained strong because of all the people who have come here from abroad to work, to contribute to the tax base and Social Security, and, yes, to have babies. So, who will combine the necessary moral and practical arguments to convince the mass of Americans that the very survival of this country depends on immigrants?
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Trump’s National Security Agenda Puts 'We the People' in Its Crosshairs
From Venezuela to Chicago, Trump’s seizure of military powers puts us all at risk.
Oct 18, 2025
As the Trump administration edges closer to a full-scale, unauthorized war on Venezuela, and amidst reports that President Donald Trump may invoke the Insurrection Act to wield the military against the American people, we must assert limits to Trump’s war powers.
On October 8, 2025, the Senate nearly passed a resolution to block the US from blowing up more boats in the Caribbean. The War Powers resolution, led by Sens. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Tim Kaine (D-Va.), failed by just three votes and follows revelations that the Trump administration secretly authorized covert CIA action in Venezuela. The administration still has not provided its legal justification or evidence supporting its repeated unlawful strikes on boats, which have killed at least 27 people so far. These startling developments are just the tip of the iceberg of Trump’s illegal abuses of wartime powers to enact his draconian agenda—in the process putting we, the people, in its crosshairs.
It’s almost impossible to list all of the ways in which the Trump administration has invoked “national security” as a means to achieve unilateral power and crush dissent. But there are a few standouts. In March this year, the Trump administration invoked an 18th-century wartime act in peacetime, targeting Venezuelan community members and disappearing them to a torture prison in El Salvador. It then defied court orders attempting to curb its unlawful actions. Simultaneously, the administration asserted that the wartime act allows it to search homes without a warrant and that it can deploy the military against certain civilians–we now know it’s delivered on the latter promise.
Meanwhile, Trump adviser Stephen Miller has said he wants to suspend habeas corpus—the right to challenge unlawful imprisonment—for all immigrants. Guantánamo Bay is warehousing immigrants as Trump attempts to expand a “global gulag” for mass deportations. The federal government has also exploited laws rooted in anti-Palestinian racism to designate Latin American and Haitian cartels as foreign terrorist organizations and wants to lock up anyone opposed to the Trump agenda as “domestic terrorists”—all of this so the administration can silence, strip rights from, and wield its massive police powers against whatever community it sees fit.
Most people view the Japanese internment and racist post-9/11 policing of Muslim communities as stains on our country’s history. The Trump administration’s latest racist power grabs are no different, and are already harming communities across the country.
This isn’t as unprecedented as it may feel, though the sheer magnitude is alarming. Racist laws and policies in the US have long drawn lines to dictate who has rights and who does not. Eighty years ago, President Franklin Roosevelt invoked the 1798 wartime act during World War II to enable the government to detain and expel people of Japanese, German, and Italian descent. Over 31,000 people were rounded up based on nationality and imprisoned in concentration camps, separating thousands of families. Raids, kidnapping, and incarceration of Japanese Americans soon followed–all justified in the name of national security.
Six decades later, the Bush administration used national security as cover for racist executive power grabs which defined the post-9/11 era. Congress passed laws and allocated billions to expand a national security apparatus that criminalized Muslim identity and political and religious expression. The Bush administration even attempted to suspend habeas corpus until the Supreme Court intervened.
Most people view the Japanese internment and racist post-9/11 policing of Muslim communities as stains on our country’s history. The Trump administration’s latest racist power grabs are no different, and are already harming communities across the country.
The administration has claimed power to deny fundamental rights to any community it decides is a threat—whether abroad, or at home. Already, residents of multiple cities are dealing with active military on their street corners. Adults and children are being snatched off the street in broad daylight, from the kidnappings of Mahmoud Khalil and Kilmar Abrego Garcia, to the disappearances of a dozen people to South Sudan, to the attempted abduction of hundreds of Guatemalan children. Last month, the Supreme Court caved to the administration and green-lit racial profiling against Latinos by masked, violent, and sometimes deadly federal officers. People in towns and neighborhoods across the country are terrified to take their kids to school, travel to work, or sleep in their own apartments, all because the administration is misusing war powers to surveil, detain, and disappear anyone it wants, foreign or domestic.
Congress must exercise its power to rein in this unchecked executive. The Senate is poised to bring a new, bipartisan War Powers resolution, offering senators another, critical chance to block the administration's unlawful military strikes on civilians. The House should likewise move Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) or Rep. Jason Crow's (D-Colo.) similar War Powers resolution. Congress must also demand answers from the administration on its deadly, illegal attacks; stop funding its raids, deportation, and disappearance machines; and restore fundamental rights by passing laws like the Neighbors Not Enemies Act, which diminishes the executive’s power to mass deport or surveil.
Increased military force, whether in the Caribbean or in Chicago, are interlocking pieces in a horrifying puzzle of presidential overreach. A runaway executive, emboldened by the courts, is subjecting communities of color—and anyone it labels a threat—to a different set of rules. We’ve seen this play out before, and we know what’s at stake for ourselves and our neighbors. We must speak out, resist, and demand our elected officials refuse to fund or sanction the Trump administration’s naked power grabs before it’s too late.
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