Cold as ICE

It appears that federal immigration authorities are utilizing state and local law enforcement agencies across the U.S. as a conduit to help their mass deportation efforts, and a manufacturer of license plate readers is caught in the middle.

A report released by independent website 404 Media on May 27 revealed that state and local law enforcement agencies across the U.S. are helping U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) investigations by using AI-powered automatic license plate reader (ALPR) systems made by Flock Safety to perform immigration-related lookups and as part of other ICE investigations.

Data obtained by 404 Media - using a public records request from the Danville, Ill., Police Department - showed the Flock search logs from police departments around the country. Those logs revealed more than 4,000 lookups between June 2024 and May 2025 that listed reasons such as “immigration,” “ICE+ERO” or “ICE WARRANT.”

The report stated that these lookups were conducted by agencies across dozens of states, and in many cases, local officers acted on informal requests from federal agents, even though ICE does not have a formal contract with Flock Safety. 

So, the question becomes, how did ICE manage to take the backdoor approach to access the data on Flock Safety’s ALPR cameras to assist in its deportation campaign?

Well, SSN Managing Editor Ken Showers reached out to Flock Safety to find out whether it was even aware that ICE had informal access to its platform, as well as get the manufacturer’s thoughts on how this data is being used by ICE.

Flock Safety Communications Director Holly Beilin’s response was that the company “supports democratically authorized governing bodies to determine what public safety means for their community.”  

She added that in some communities, “that may mean enforcing immigration violations. In others, this is not legally or socially acceptable. It is our position at Flock that we do not dictate how and which laws individual communities choose to enforce.”  

While that may be true, the fact remains that while Flock Safety’s license plate readers may assist local law enforcement in catching bank robbers, for example, allowing ICE to indirectly access the data on these devices means that there is no limits to what it can do “with no public oversight or control into what they are tapping into,” Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, told 404 Media.

A scary thought indeed, and with Flock Safety deploying over 5,000 cameras in as many as 42 states across the country, there are significant privacy and civil liberties issues raised here regarding how the collected data is used.

“Our products are customizable to each community’s needs - agencies can choose which alerts to receive and can opt out of immigration alerts if they choose,” Beilin added. “They can decide to share data nationally, within a local radius, or not at all; and they can determine how long to retain their Flock data. We’ve made accountability and transparency built-in features to every Flock product, requiring search justifications and providing indefinitely saved audit reports.” 

While Flock Safety’s response is following the company line, the bigger picture here is that a federal agency is flexing its muscle to obtain data it does not legally have the right to access to further its own agenda. And the reality is, there doesn’t seem to be anything that can be done to stop it.