Some local police have access to an ICE facial recognition app

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer takes a video as they stand guard in front of protesters outside Delaney Hall, which is being used as an ICE detention center on May 27, 2026 in Newark, New Jersey. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images North America hide caption toggle caption Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images North America Federal immigration officers often use facial recognition technology to identify immigrants in the field. Now, a newly revealed document from the Department of Homeland Security outlines plans to give local police working on its behalf the same type of technology. The document, first reported earlier this month by the tech news outlet 404 media , is a Privacy Threshold Analysis, which is essentially a federal report assessing whether the privacy implications of a tool warrant further government study. The tool in question is a mobile app called the ICE Task Force Module, which allows local police to scan the faces of people they stop in their communities. The app then compares the facial scan against more than 250 million government records. Those include the State Department's Visa records and records from the Traveler Verification Service, used by the Transportation Security Administration at airports to verify identities on international flights. Once police scan a person's face, the app then instructs an officer either to "not detain or arrest," or it gives the officer a reference code to use to obtain more information from ICE. …