ICE is increasingly using new tech. That has big privacy impacts on migrants and U.S. citizens

As U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents continue to try to find and deport people as part of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation program, technology is becoming more important.

New apps, access to more data and enhanced facial recognition are all included in that effort. But so, too, are platforms aimed at allowing users to alert others to where ICE agents are and other functions to help those ICE is pursuing.

Joseph Cox has written about many of these technological advancements. He’s co-founder of 404 Media and host of its podcast. He joined The Show to talk about what he’s found.

Full conversation

MARK BRODIE: Joseph, to what extent is ICE using new technologies to carry out mass deportations?

JOSEPH COX: Yeah, when people think of ICE, they may think of the agents on the ground, maybe at Home Depots or other locations in Los Angeles or anywhere else across the country for the moment, but underneath that, behind that, there is a lot of tech going on.

Some of it is somewhat basic, some of it is very, very sophisticated, but what I would say broadly is that anything is really on the table now when it comes to the sort of data ICE will exploit or the sorts of technologies that they will use, ultimately, with the goal of identifying people to deport and then most importantly for them, finding their physical locations so they can detain people and they can remove from from the country.

BRODIE: So let's talk about some of the more basic things that ICE is doing. What does that entail?

COX: Sure, so ICE for a very, very long time has had access to something called ICM. It's basically a very large database, and that contains people's Social Security numbers, biographical information, demographic information, sometimes even the tattoos they may have. Now you may not necessarily be in this database, but often targets of ICE will be. So that's very much on the basic side. What has changed since the new administration came into power is that it has tried to amplify or supercharge that database and sort of access to that information.

So ICE brought on an infamous company at this point called Palantir, gave them another $30 million contract, and the idea was to sort of modernize that database and bring together information from all other parts of the government to make it a lot easier for ICE to find the physical location of targets. That's very explicit in the contract with Palantir.

BRODIE: What would classify under the maybe more advanced or or newer things that ICE is doing now?

COX: So a couple of weeks ago, we revealed that ICE is using a new facial recognition app. This is installed on the phones of ICE officials and all they have to do is point the phone camera at somebody's face. It will then search various databases and it will come up with their name, biographical information and probably most importantly for the agency, whether that person has received an order of deportation.

This one app is tapping into a load of U.S. federal and state databases at once. So whereas before, facial recognition apps were using images taken from social media. This new ICE facial recognition app is using a gallery of photos from Customs and Border Protection, from the State Department, some other agencies.

And most interestingly to me, the sort of photos that are taken when somebody enters or exits the United States. You, you imagine when you go across the border, you have to look into a camera sometimes, those images are now being fed into this app.

And experts told me Congress has never authorized facial recognition technology at the border to be turned inwards into the country.

BRODIE: Yeah, I wanted to ask if all of these things are legal or not. It sounds like some of them anyway, might be in kind of a legal gray area.

COX: Yeah, so when any part of DHS really, whether that's ICE or Customs and Border Protection or Border Patrol or whatever, when they use some sort of new service or technology, they're supposed to do something called a privacy impact assessment or privacy threshold analysis.

And this is basically a small piece of paper or a small document, which lays out this is what the technology is, this is what it's capable of, and this is how it's going to potentially impact the civil rights, not just of non-Americans, but American citizens as well. And usually those are posted to the Department of Homeland Security's website whenever they pilot or use one of these new technologies. I haven't seen those yet for either the Palantir contract or for the facial recognition app.

Of course, that seems kind of a small complaint when ICE is doing other things such as, you know, grabbing people outside courtrooms or whatever else you may point to that the agency is doing. But on the technical and the legal level, yes, ICE should be doing that when it rolls out this technology, but it doesn't seem to be doing so.

BRODIE: Is there a sense of how effective these apps and other tools are in allowing ICE to do what it's trying to do? And I mostly ask because we keep hearing that the president's stated goals of the number of deportations he wants aren't really happening.

COX: So honestly, no. It is very, very difficult to tell the efficiency of this technology, right? But I think you're right to look to the, the quota of arrests, the 3,000 arrest figure was a popular one. The White House and is now, or rather the DOJ has now pushed back against that.

What I will say, without knowing exactly how effective this technology is, I don't think, we've seen really the full impact of it yet. We only reported on Palantir's new, more mature involvement with ICE in April or May, like around that time frame. It's only August now, and this technology can take time to roll out. It can take time to develop for officers to get used to it, for it to be rolled out to different field offices.

So although it's kind of unclear exactly how effective the tech is at the moment. I think things will absolutely ramp up once, once the agency and officials do get a handle on it and do realize, oh, this is how we can best use the technology at our disposal.

BRODIE: Are there new tools also being developed or do you see, at least in the short term, DHS and ICE really focusing on, as you say, trying to really understand how best to use what they have?

COX: The sort of newer parts to me are ICE gaining access to more data. That's not necessarily, you know, a fancy new gadget or a fancy new piece of technology. It's much more on the information they're able to get on people.

One example is that there is a very obscure insurance database called ISO Claim Search, which appears to be nearly all encompassing, having well over 90% of insurance claims inside this database, and police have used it for years to track down stolen vehicles or pursue other sort of criminal matters. Now it's being turned into an immigration enforcement tool, essentially.

So although there is this spectrum of sophistication of technology that ICE can use, the really alarming and new thing to me is the, the data that they're, they're getting access to.

BRODIE: Is there any reason to think that this will not continue what ICE is doing in terms of new, new technology, more data, that kind of thing?

COX: I think we're only at the beginning when it comes to ICE getting access to new technologies or data as part of the Trump administration's very large budget bill, ICE has been given tens upon tens of billions of dollars now, including $6 billion if I recall correctly, specifically for surveillance. That's a lot of money when buying this data can sometimes cost simply thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands.

If you have $6 billion to spend on, on surveillance capabilities, we're at the start when it comes to developing new tools or techniques.