Internal government documents reportedly indicate that U.S.Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is preparing to distribute a facial recognition application known as the ICE Task Force Module to more than 1,200 local law enforcement agencies across 32 states.

The system is designed to scan individuals’ faces and compare them against a massive database containing approximately 250 million records sourced from the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department.

According to the reporting, the tool could be used to identify individuals suspected of immigration violations and potentially subject them to deportation proceedings.

The program is tied to the 287(g) initiative, which allows selected local police departments to collaborate closely with federal immigration authorities, effectively extending ICE’s enforcement reach through local officers.However, internal privacy assessments acknowledge that the system is not fully reliable and that U.S.citizens are likely to be misidentified during scans.

The documents also suggest that all images captured through the application could be retained for up to 15 years, raising concerns about long-term biometric surveillance and data storage practices.

Civil liberties organizations and surveillance researchers have criticized the technology, warning that it could lead to wrongful detentions and increased privacy risks.Past incidents have already highlighted such dangers, including a case in which a U.S.citizen was mistakenly arrested and detained for hours due to facial recognition errors.

Experts from digital rights groups argue that deploying an unrefined system at scale could worsen existing issues with misidentification, particularly in immigrant communities already subject to heightened scrutiny.

Critics also emphasize that the expansion of such tools may blur the lines between local policing and federal immigration enforcement, raising legal and ethical concerns about due process, consent, and the normalization of pervasive biometric surveillance across the United States.