As the U.S. government ramps up its efforts to rid the nation of illegal immigrants, it is turning to a bevy of new technologies to help it sift through the domestic population. Increasingly, the Trump administration is using facial recognition, and a new report now claims that the Department of Homeland Security is even distributing face recording tech to local police departments to assist with immigration enforcement operations.
404 Media writes that Customs and Border Protection recently released an app called Mobile Identify onto the Google Play Store that seems to be designed to use biometric scanning on potential detainees. The app is being made available to state and local law enforcement agencies as part of a program called 287(g), which essentially deputizes officials within those agencies to work on behalf of the federal government. The program appears active in a majority of states.
404 got ahold of Mobile Identify and unspooled its code to attempt to see what it does. The journalists write that “multiple parts of the app’s code make clear references to scanning faces. One package is called ‘facescanner.’ Other parts mention ‘FacePresence’ and ‘No facial image found.’” However, they note that the Play Store’s description of the app does not mention facial recognition as a function of the app. That said, the app’s description does everything but mention face recording—with the obvious point of the app being to identify people who are in the country illegally.
The Play Store’s description reads:
Through a formal agreement, or Memorandum of Agreement (MOA), with DHS, participating agencies like your Sheriff’s Department can have designated officers who are trained, certified, and authorized to perform certain immigration enforcement functions, helping to identify and process individuals who may be in the country unlawfully. This tool is built to streamline those responsibilities securely and efficiently, directly in the field.
A screenshot provided in the Play Store also notes that the app “requires camera access to take photos of subjects.”
When reached for comment by Gizmodo, a DHS spokesperson did not deny that the app used facial recognition but did not otherwise provide any details about what it does. “While the Department does not discuss specific vendors or operational tools, any technology used by DHS Components must comply with the requirements and oversight framework,” an agency spokesperson said.
Gizmodo sought direct confirmation from DHS that the app uses facial recognition, and will update if we hear back.
The news follows on the heels of another report from 404 that showed that the agency was using an app called Mobile Fortify, which similarly leveraged facial recognition technology. The outlet previously reported that Fortify could frighteningly a person’s name, birthday, “alien number,” and information on whether they’ve been given an order of deportation or not.
The Trump administration’s deportation efforts are aggressive and ongoing. During the first six months of Trump’s second term in office, the administration claimed to have deported a total of 150,000 people. Those numbers aren’t entirely unprecedented (indeed, an article from July noted that Trump’s current deportation numbers are roughly comparable with the Obama administration’s numbers from 2014). However, the loud, aggressive fashion in which the administration has gone about these operations certainly stands out from previous administrations, as does its leverage of increasingly invasive and powerful digital tools.
