For several months, ICE agents (immigration and customs and customs) would leave Mobile Fortify, an application installed on their service smartphones, capable of identifying a person in real time from a simple photo of their face or contactless digital tracks. This tool would now be integrated into everyday operations of entertainment and removal operations (ERO), ICE branches for arrest and eviction.
The aim of biometric technologies of DHS (Department of Homeland Security) was originally to provide entry points of the territory, airports, ports, border locations. For example, the service verification service allows you to verify the identity of travelers on arrival on American soil by recognizing the face. The IDder base stores fingerprints, faces and other data of more than 270 million individuals.
From now on, the agent can direct his smartphone to his face or hand on the street, immediately hand over the server and get correspondence in a few seconds. This new use is not trivial, no longer a question of inspection of the entry point, but about identifying a person in any place, without transparency, without an explicit judicial mandate and in an uncertain legal framework.
Connected biometric architecture
The system is first based on IDER (automated biometric identification system), the main biometric database of DHS, which centralizes fingerprints, face and migration data. HART (Advanced Recognition Technology) is deployed and presents the development of Idder by integrating other features such as IRIS or approach. The verification service traveler, used on the border, is also mobilized. Finally, analytical platforms, such as Palantira platforms associated with integrated database improvements, allow crossed correlations with geolocated, social or financial information. This architecture supports Mobile Fortify and transforms each agent into a mobile access point to the entire federal security infrastructure.
Discreet but invasive use
According to internal documents consulted by 404 media, Mobile Fortify enables mobile use in “training” or operating mode in contexts as well as diverse such as public transport, residential districts or even demonstrations.
This deployment would not be simple tests, but are part of a wider strategy that combines the use of artificial intelligence, facial recognition, geolocation and file transitions. In June, ICE issued a call to offer offers evoking the future system capable of monitoring up to a million profiles at the same time.
Uncertain legality, missing framework
The basic problem that is Mobile Fortify is that no law would explicitly allow its use in the context of the internal police. Face recognition tools are based on the implicit consent of the traveler, which is no longer true here.
In the State, no public directive does not determine the conditions for launching biometric scanning, duration of data storage, targeted populations, dispute mechanisms of erroneous identification or even audit methods.
Proven technical and safety risks
The DHS itself recognized the low reliability of face recognition in the audit of February 2025. Comparative errors are common, especially in racial people. There are also documented cases of offensive arrests based on false positives.
In addition, the shortcomings of cyber security are serious, the audit September 2024 shows that 73 % of mobile phones did not have the required safety parameters. Several devices were associated with unauthorized networks abroad and unsecured applications from China or Russia were installed. Finally, 30 % of phones introduced into the reconstruction were not properly cleaned of their biometric data.
Loss, theft or attack on these terminals could reveal the personal data of scanned individuals, sometimes without their consent.
Towards the normalization of mobile biometric monitoring?
In addition to the American case, Mobile Fortify illustrates the scale change. Mobile biometry is no longer another tool, but becomes structural and potentially ubiquitous. ICE has already exported its know-how through BitMap and provided foreign police forces connected tools for mobile collection with American bases.
This precedent asks many questions, because without legislative supervision and democratic debate, a technological evolution that precedes any legal reflection. Especially because if this development seems to be remotely in Europe, it could inspire or justify similar policies in other democracies that could then decide to take it.
(Tagstotranslate) Mobile Fortify