ICE Facial Recognition App 'Mobile Fortify' Used for Mass Deportations and Surveillance

ICE and CBP Surveillance Technology

• 📱 ICE and CBP agents are utilizing a facial recognition app called Mobile Fortify to facilitate President Trump's mass deportation campaign.
• 📸 The app allows officers to scan faces and search them against a database of over 200 million images stored in federal databases.
• ⚠️ This technology is described as dangerous, unprecedented, and frankly, blatantly illegal, being used without consent on US citizens and lawful permanent residents.

Accuracy and Constitutionality Concerns

• 📉 The Department of Homeland Security has reportedly used the Mobile Fortify app over 100,000 times since its launch.
• ⚖️ Senate Democrats have raised concerns that this type of on-demand surveillance threatens privacy and free speech.
• 🚫 The app is criticized for being notoriously error-filled, with a higher error rate for people of color.

Filming Protesters and Harassment

• 📹 Federal agents are also observed filming and harassing protesters and individuals attempting to record their actions.
• 🚨 A journalist shared a video of an agent photographing a license plate and labeling the person recording as a "domestic terrorist."
• ✊ The First Amendment protects the right to record law enforcement in public, and retribution for doing so is illegal.

Case Study: Mubashir Khalif Hussein

• 🇺🇸 A 20-year-old Somali American US citizen, Mubashir Khalif Hussein, was stopped and detained by ICE agents in Minnesota.
• 🚫 Despite repeatedly asserting his citizenship and offering his passport card, agents refused to look at documentation and insisted on scanning his face with the app.
• 🥶 He was eventually released seven miles outside Minneapolis in winter, with no means of transportation back.

Broader Implications of Surveillance

• ⏳ The app reportedly stores photos for up to 15 years, raising significant privacy concerns.
• 🚨 The use of this technology on the street, particularly on people of color, exacerbates existing issues of racial profiling and wrongful identification.
• 📢 The ACLU is involved in lawsuits challenging these unconstitutional stops and detentions.