Unearthed docs show ICE plans to arm police with 'flawed' facial recognition tools: report

Internal government documents reveal Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, plans to distribute a "flawed" facial recognition app called the ICE Task Force Module to over 1,200 local police departments across 32 states.

The technology scans faces against a database of 250 million Department of Homeland Security, or DHS, and State Department records to identify deportation targets, requiring no warrant, consent, or notice, according to reports by 404 Media.

ICE's own privacy analysis acknowledges that U.S. citizens will inevitably be caught in scans, with all photos stored for 15 years.

The app targets 287(g) program agencies, effectively converting local officers into ICE agents.

Civil liberties groups warn the system is flawed — in April 2025, U.S. citizen Juan Carlos López-Gómez was wrongly arrested and detained 30 hours after facial recognition misidentified him.

Jake Laperruque, deputy director of the Center for Democracy & Technology's Security and Surveillance Project, warned that an earlier version of the app briefly surfaced on the Google Play Store, and compared police officers' access to such technology to asking a 16-year-old who just failed their driver's exam to pick a dozen classmates.

ACLU deputy director Nate Wessler called the plan a recipe for disaster, noting it generates false matches, terrorizes communities, and entangles untrained police in immigration decisions.

Electronic Frontier Foundation researcher Cooper Quintin warned the technology also expands "omnipresent surveillance and unjust detainment."

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