Congress Must Stop ICE From Scanning Faces In Public

CONGRESS MUST HALT ICE’S USE OF FACIAL SCREENING APPS UNTIL BINDING PRIVACY LAWS ARE ENACTED As your constituent, I urge Congress to immediately pause ICE’s use of the Mobile Fortify and Mobile Identify facial-scanning apps until clear statutory limits, transparency requirements, and enforceable privacy protections are in place. Credible reporting shows DHS and ICE agents using these tools during street-level encounters, including incidents involving U.S. citizens, with no meaningful notice or opt-out. This practice risks violating Fourth Amendment privacy rights and chilling lawful First Amendment activity. CONGRESS CANNOT ALLOW BIOMETRIC IDENTIFICATION IN PUBLIC WITHOUT NOTICE, CONSENT, OR OVERSIGHT DHS has acknowledged that these apps allow agents to scan faces and compare them against “trusted source photos” drawn from government systems for identity verification. When agents can point a phone at a person’s face during a stop, sidewalks effectively become biometric ID checkpoints. Without explicit statutory guardrails, this creates a system of identification without consent, transparency, or judicial authorization, particularly threatening for people who protest, observe, or document enforcement actions. CONGRESS MUST ADDRESS ERROR, BIAS, AND WRONGFUL STOPS CAUSED BY FACIAL RECOGNITION Multiple Senators, including Ron Wyden, Jeff Merkley, Edward Markey, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders, have warned that on-demand biometric surveillance poses serious risks to privacy and free speech and that facial-recognition systems are prone to error and bias, especially for communities of color. In real-world encounters, even small error rates can lead to wrongful stops, coercive questioning, or detention, with limited avenues for correction once an agent treats a biometric match as authoritative. CONGRESS ALREADY HAS LEGISLATION AND MUST MOVE IT WITHOUT DELAY Congress does not need to start from scratch. Representative Bennie Thompson has introduced H.R. 7124, the Realigning Mobile Phone Biometrics for American Privacy Protection Act. This bill would prohibit DHS from using mobile facial-recognition tools outside ports of entry and would require enforceable standards to protect privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties. Failure to advance this legislation leaves Americans exposed to unchecked biometric surveillance. CONGRESS MUST TAKE OVERSIGHT AND LEGISLATIVE STEPS TO PROTECT PRIVACY RIGHTS (1) COSPONSOR AND ADVANCE H.R. 7124, and press House and Senate leadership to schedule hearings and markup. (2) CONDUCT OVERSIGHT HEARINGS requiring DHS and ICE to disclose where Mobile Fortify and Mobile Identify are deployed, what databases and image sources are used, how long biometric data is retained, how accuracy and bias are tested, and what remedies exist for misidentification. (3) ENACT CLEAR STATUTORY SAFEGUARDS, including warrant requirements for domestic biometric scanning, strict data-retention limits, independent audits, public reporting, and penalties for misuse. Thank you.