ICE, CBP Agents Are Scanning People's Faces on Streets To Verify Citizenship

Big Brother’s street-level stare-down has gone mobile, and your face is the new suspect lineup.

Federal immigration agents are now pointing smartphone cameras at bicyclists, drivers and porch-sitters across the heartland, scanning faces in real time to verify citizenship on the spot.

ICE agents are captured using the biometric facial technology to verify whether American citizens are, in fact, citizens in footage obtained by 404 Media.

In one daylight encounter captured on a teen’s phone, a U.S. Border Patrol agent in a baseball cap and neck gaiter stops two young men on bicycles.

"You don’t got no ID?" the agent asks the boy filming.

The youth replies that he was born in the United States.

The agent turns to a colleague and asks, "Can you do facial?"

A second officer approaches, orders the boy to face the sun, and hovers a phone camera inches from his face for several seconds before asking him to confirm his name.

In separate footage shot from inside a stopped vehicle, ICE agents in Enforcement and Removal Operations vests surround the driver’s window.

"I’m an American citizen, so leave me alone," the driver says.

WATCH:

"Alright, we just got to verify that," an officer responds. "If you could take your hat off, it would be a lot quicker. I’m going to run your information."

The agent then aims the phone camera at the driver’s face while colleagues peer at the screen.

"The growing use of face recognition by ICE shows us two things: that we should have banned government use of face recognition when we had the chance because it is dangerous, invasive, and an inherent threat to civil liberties and that any remaining pretense that ICE is harassing and surveilling people in any kind of ‘precise’ way should be left in the dust,” Matthew Guariglia, senior policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told 404 Media in an email.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection confirmed in June that the agency deploys the Mobile Fortify app, a tool that scans faces against a 200-million-image database and queries State Department, CBP, FBI and state records for names, birth dates, alien numbers and deportation orders.

"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,” Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, D-Miss., ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, said in a statement.

Just like the Patriot Act sold indefinite detention and warrantless wiretaps as "temporary" shields against terror, Washington is again sliding down the slope where civil liberties vanish in the name of border security and public safety.