US Immigration and Customs Enforcement

Smartphone app letting ICE/CBP officers photograph a person during a street encounter and match against CBP's Traveler Verification Service (same system used for airport processing), with contactless fingerprint capture against IDENT as a fallback if no facial match returns. A 'Super Query' feature reportedly searches databases covering individuals, vehicles, aircraft, vessels and addresses simultaneously. Used over 100,000 times since launch per a January 2026 Illinois/Chicago lawsuit. A Privacy Threshold Analysis states ICE does not offer the option to decline biometric collection, retains photos and fingerprints for 15 years including non-matches, and may collect regardless of citizenship or immigration status. May be extended to 1,000+ state and local 287(g) agencies. Differs from UK operator-initiated facial recognition in three ways: it queries border/travel biometric infrastructure rather than a policing watchlist (so includes people never arrested), adds fingerprint capture as a fallback, and operates federally -- bypassing the 20+ US city and state facial recognition bans. On 5 Feb 2026 the 'ICE Out of My Face Act' was introduced to ban ICE/CBP biometric use; a coalition including EFF and EPIC has demanded DHS shut the app down.

Update, November 2026. DHS's AI Use Case Inventory, posted on 28 January 2026 and reported by FedScoop, lists Mobile Fortify separately for CBP and ICE, classes it as high-impact, gives May 2025 as the start of use, and shows ICE still working on its AI impact assessment, with monitoring protocols, a fail-safe and an appeal process not yet in place. ID Tech reported on 29 January 2026, citing WIRED, that the attribution of the app to NEC surfaced in DHS's 2025 AI Use Case Inventory, and that WIRED's reporting points to a contract of roughly $23.9 million; neither DHS nor NEC is quoted confirming this. WIRED reported in February 2026 that the app "can't actually verify who people are". Biometric Update reported on 18 June 2026, from an ICE Privacy Threshold Analysis, that a separate "Task Force Module" built on the same technology, launched on 24 September 2025, lets ICE-deputised state and local officers photograph people and check them against more than 250 million DHS and Department of State visa records through subsets of CBP's Traveler Verification Service, retaining each photograph for 15 years; the module "could be made available to more than 1,000 local and regional law enforcement agencies". No standalone Privacy Impact Assessment or system of records notice had been published for the module, according to that report.