Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is exploring growing a pair of good glasses that will “complement” the company’s facial recognition Cellular Fortify utility, which lets officers scan somebody’s face to confirm their citizenship, in response to a Division of Homeland Safety (DHS) official. One other one that attended a convention the place a senior ICE official spoke concerning the plans additionally described them to 404 Media.
The good glasses, in the event that they got here to fruition, can be yet one more technological escalation within the Trump administration’s mass deportation marketing campaign. 404 Media beforehand revealed ICE and Customs Border Safety (CBP) had been utilizing the inner app Cellular Fortify to scan peoples’ faces, and instantaneously question a variety of presidency databases to determine whether or not to detain the particular person or not.
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Matthew Elliston, assistant director of Regulation Enforcement Techniques & Evaluation at ICE, mentioned in a gathering the plan to create smartglasses was to “complement Cellular Fortify,” the DHS official mentioned. 404 Media granted the official anonymity as they weren’t permitted to talk to the press.
Individually, throughout the 2026 Border Safety Expo which occurred this week, Elliston was talking. A participant requested Elliston what applied sciences the company was on the lookout for, in response to Kenny Morris from the American Buddies Service Committee who attended the convention. Elliston’s reply included “wearable heads up shows,” Morris mentioned.
Elliston then mentioned that assaults towards ICE officers had been up 1400 p.c (related figures have been disputed in press stories), and that smartglasses would let officers be hands-free to reply to any threats, Morris mentioned.
404 Media first heard about ICE’s plan to make use of good glasses to complement Cellular Fortify a number of months in the past from the DHS official. On the time, no written documentation of the plan was accessible. Final month, impartial journalist Ken Klippenstein printed a price range doc which talked about DHS’s plan to “ship progressive {hardware}, corresponding to operational prototypes of good glasses, to equip brokers with real-time entry to info and biometric identification capabilities within the area.”
404 Media first revealed the existence of Cellular Fortify utilizing leaked ICE emails. It’s put in on DHS officers’ work telephones, and performs facial recognition on anyone after an ICE official factors their telephone digital camera at an individual. Consumer manuals for the software confirmed the app instantaneously runs a topic’s face towards a financial institution of 200 million photographs, then pulls up their identify, nationality, date of start, distinctive identifiers corresponding to their “alien” quantity, and whether or not an immigration choose has decided they need to be faraway from the nation.
404 Media has documented ICE and CBP officers utilizing the smartphone app on American streets, discovered ICE believes individuals can’t refuse to be scanned by the app, and that the app misidentified one lady, twice.
A DHS spokesperson advised 404 Media in an electronic mail “Presently, no funds have been dedicated to any type of ‘good glasses.’”
“The Science and Know-how Directorate (S&T) is continually assessing the wants of ICE and different DHS elements to help regulation enforcement officers within the area. These discussions contain privateness places of work, chief info officers, and attorneys to make sure that any expertise that DHS makes use of is inside the full scope of the regulation,” the spokesperson added.
As we’ve reported, CBP officers have been seen a number of instances sporting Meta’s Ray-Ban smartglasses throughout immigration operations. That is regardless of a ban on private recording units. A CBP spokesperson advised 404 Media in an electronic mail “Recordings might solely be achieved on authorities sanctioned units. Officers and brokers might put on personally bought sun shades.”
Dave Maass, senior investigative researcher on the Digital Frontier Basis (EFF), advised 404 Media that “DHS has been funding analysis into face-mounted surveillance goggles for fairly a while, together with Hololens programs designed to assist CBP to supposedly ‘see terrorists.’ Because the expertise advances, it isn’t shocking that so has DHS’s ambitions.”
“However at worst, we’re speaking a couple of expertise that invades your privateness if an ICE or CBP officer even seems to be at you, however even at greatest, we’re taking a look at a venture that, like numerous DHS tech, simply wastes taxpayer cash on shiny devices,” he added.
In regards to the writer
Joseph is an award-winning investigative journalist centered on producing affect. His work has triggered lots of of thousands and thousands of {dollars} price of fines, shut down tech corporations, and far more.
