How DHS Facial Recognition Tech Spread to ICE Enforcement
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is using a smartphone app to identify people based on an image of their fingerprints or face, 404 Media reported Thursday, based on a review of internal ICE emails. The expanding and repurposing of this sophisticated technology, ordinarily used by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) when people are entering or exiting the country, is now being used on people living in the United States to meet mass deportation and arrest quotas imposed by President Donald Trump.
The app, Mobile Fortify, enables users to verify an unknown person’s identity in the field through contactless fingerprints and facial images on ICE-issued phones, according to an email sent to all ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations personnel and obtained by 404. According to the emails, Mobile Fortify can identify a person by comparing a photo of their face across two databases—Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) Traveler Verification Service database of people’s photos taken when entering the United States, and Seizure and Apprehension Workflow, described by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as an “intelligence aggregator” that brings together information related to searches and seizures. For fingerprint matches, the app uses DHS’s centralized Automated Biometric Identification System, which “holds more than 320 million unique identities and processes more tha
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