Despite DHS repeatedly framing Mobile Fortify as a tool for identifying people through facial recognition, however, the app does not actually “verify” the identities of people stopped by federal immigration agents—a well-known limitation of the technology and a function of how Mobile Fortify is designed and used.
That quote from the source wired article, does not allege that the DHS makes any claim that the app can itself verify anyone's identity.
Where has the DHS made any statement that the app does something that it does not do?
The closest thing I can find is from the 2025 DHS AI use case inventory, where the entry for Mobile fortify states it's benefits are:
"Utilizing facial comparison or fingerprint matching services, agents/officers in the field are able to quickly verify identity utilizing trusted source photos."
The claim is not that the app verifies someone's identity, but that it can potentially find trusted source photos that look similar to the person in question.
The officer could then evaluate the match, and make a determination to their own satisfaction that their subject is one and the same as the person in the database.
ICE told a ranking member of the House homeland security committee:
[...] an apparent biometric match by Mobile Fortify is a ‘definitive’ determination of a person’s status and that an ICE officer may ignore evidence of American citizenship [...]
DHS -> Department of Homeland Security, parent agency of both others created after 9/11
CBP -> Customs and Border Protection, descended from U.S. Customs Service, which traces back to the end of the 18th century, but added to DHS at the beginning of the 21st
ICE -> Immigration and Customs Enforcement, created in 2003 from the criminal investigation arm of CBP and related agencies
They are related but not the same. Under the current US regime, all the stops are being pulled out and all the lines blurred. As a result, you're seeing ICE doing crowd control, BORTAC (basically CBP's tactical / SWAT unit) doing run-of-the-mill immigration enforcement, and all kinds of other wackiness. The DHS does much much more than just CBP/ICE stuff too.
ICE was not “created from the criminal investigation arm of CBP and related agencies”, it was created at the same time, by the same law, as CBP and DHS, from some of the investigation and enforcement arms of INS and the Customs Service, with much of the rest of those agencies (including the Border Patrol, which had been one of the enforcement arm of INS) becoming CBP, and the routine "happy path" immigration functions of INS moving to USCIS under the Department of State.
> They are related but not the same. Under the current US regime, all the stops are being pulled out and all the lines blurred.
A large part of that is that notional function of the “immigration crackdown” falls logically in ICE's domain, and this was the justification for massively increasing ICE funding, but CBP (and particularly the Border Patrol) having much more of the no-rules culture that was sought for the operation, leading to CBP and Border Patrol personnel taking key roles in the operation (which is why, until he became something of a political scapegoat for the Administration policy, a Border Patrol area commander got redesignated a "commander at large" and then given operational command not just of Border Patrol involvement but the notionally ICE-led operation.)
That trend of blurred lines has been going on for quite a while. Iirc a big callout of the 9/11 commission report was lack of communication between the FBI and the CIA. Even on the local side increasingly it seems every major crime gets a mixture of various federal, state and local law enforcement response.
A notable case was the Uvalde school massacre, which only ended when a border patrol tactical team (believe from the BORTAC group you mentioned) took over from dithering local forces. This was a major example, but interagency collaboration has also become routine in far less dire circumstances.
The militarization and blurred lines have thus become a feature not a bug. And it won't be reformed simply by having the current administration fade into the rearview mirror. It would be beneficial I think though if current excesses led to a more holistic introspection and reform, but we'll see.
Technology wise, I’m more interested to have a platform or site that tracks the people who build these technologies and apps, rather than the runner boy in the streets. Those people have no morals or ethics, I want to know them and know their names/company names if contractors, so I never work with them or hire them or share any sort of collaboration with them.
I don't think that's anywhere close to an accurate description of the UK's recent post office scandal?
I haven't seen AI feature in any reporting. Rather, the software had bugs, some people decided the software couldn't be wrong and convinced others to the point of conviction?
Indeed, that scandal vastly predated AI everywhere, and was just vanilla consultant-grade software (i.e. trash) coupled with vast incompetence at every stage.
Incompetence is not sufficient to explain that case. Many high level leaders were aware of deficiencies in the software and wanted to prosecute anyway. That is active malice or indifference to human suffering.
I wonder when it will sink in for the average (especially non-white) American citizen that you are one false positive in an algorithm away from being arrested and detained / deported. If you’re lucky there will be a public outcry large enough that you’re released (like 5 year old Liam Ramos). Given expectations built into the constitution, this is should be disturbing. As a white, upper middle class, multigenerational citizen of the US, I find ICE’s actions disturbing at a fundamental level. Probably because I can extrapolate to the logical conclusion of this. Other people are extrapolating as well and it wouldn’t surprise me if continued ICE actions spur a public rebellion against surveillance of all forms, after seeing how it can be combined with a lawless federal government to subvert basic rights. I also think it will result in a backlash against private prisons in general as people then extrapolate from the ICE situation to the daily reality faced by primarily black men when interacting with the police. With a simple head nod, the cops can plant evidence and present a narrative to a judge and jury that puts you away for 20 years over nothing more than a dirty look at a cop.
If you think carrying a form of ID or passport will save you from ICE, I just want you to imagine a scenario where you are alone with several federal agents who, when provided with your proof of citizenship, light it on fire with a match and throw you in a van. Papers are just physical objects and unless ICE is wearing 24/7 streaming body cams, the above scenario could happen to literally anyone.
Papers are not just physical objects. The issuing agency records your details and the date of issuance. This is why cops don't boost their citation numbers by shredding your driver's license.
> This is why cops don't boost their citation numbers by shredding your driver's license.
The cops are issuing a citation, which you can contest in a court with a reference to that agency record. ICE has a habit of snatching people off the streets and stashing them in not-quite-black sites in Texas or Florida until they can book them on a private airplane to Guatemala.
I was told in a Know Your Rights training to carry copies of documents, so they can't steal / burn the originals.
Readers, whatever you're doing right now is what you would be doing during the rise of Nazi Germany... Be kind, be a good neighbor, don't talk to cops.
If things get worse we’ll need to wear body cams live-streaming to the cloud at all times to ensure our rights are upheld. Now that I think about it - not a bad product idea!
Anecdotally I've seen a significant uptick in folks installing dash cams in their cars.
There was a local incident where ICE drove erratically to make it look as though a legal observer initiated a crash. They then called and lied to the local police department. The activist was then released when he provided dash cam footage proving that they lied about the incident. https://lataco.com/oxnard-dash-cam-ice-crash
This is just one more thing in a time of all the things. When all this backlash comes to roost at techs door this site I expect will be shocked. How could the average American confuse the rich VCs with the moloch worshiping pedophiles and the fascist government populists?
When the giant finally wakes in America it won't be reasonable or well targeted. I'm reminded that violence in gang neighborhoods is modeled as a contaigen. Have we ever seen a violence "pandemic"?
Which I guess is why Zuck has been building compounds.
Privacy issues and politics aside, the title doesn't really seem to describe the content of the article.
The app seems to be doing what they say it can do. Is there any actual data as to it's effectiveness, match and false positive rate?
Despite DHS repeatedly framing Mobile Fortify as a tool for identifying people through facial recognition, however, the app does not actually “verify” the identities of people stopped by federal immigration agents—a well-known limitation of the technology and a function of how Mobile Fortify is designed and used.
That quote from the source wired article, does not allege that the DHS makes any claim that the app can itself verify anyone's identity.
Where has the DHS made any statement that the app does something that it does not do?
The closest thing I can find is from the 2025 DHS AI use case inventory, where the entry for Mobile fortify states it's benefits are:
"Utilizing facial comparison or fingerprint matching services, agents/officers in the field are able to quickly verify identity utilizing trusted source photos."
The claim is not that the app verifies someone's identity, but that it can potentially find trusted source photos that look similar to the person in question.
The officer could then evaluate the match, and make a determination to their own satisfaction that their subject is one and the same as the person in the database.
ICE told a ranking member of the House homeland security committee:
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/10/ices-forced-face...DHS, ICE, CBP - seems like a lot of redundancy.
DHS -> Department of Homeland Security, parent agency of both others created after 9/11
CBP -> Customs and Border Protection, descended from U.S. Customs Service, which traces back to the end of the 18th century, but added to DHS at the beginning of the 21st
ICE -> Immigration and Customs Enforcement, created in 2003 from the criminal investigation arm of CBP and related agencies
They are related but not the same. Under the current US regime, all the stops are being pulled out and all the lines blurred. As a result, you're seeing ICE doing crowd control, BORTAC (basically CBP's tactical / SWAT unit) doing run-of-the-mill immigration enforcement, and all kinds of other wackiness. The DHS does much much more than just CBP/ICE stuff too.
ICE was not “created from the criminal investigation arm of CBP and related agencies”, it was created at the same time, by the same law, as CBP and DHS, from some of the investigation and enforcement arms of INS and the Customs Service, with much of the rest of those agencies (including the Border Patrol, which had been one of the enforcement arm of INS) becoming CBP, and the routine "happy path" immigration functions of INS moving to USCIS under the Department of State.
> They are related but not the same. Under the current US regime, all the stops are being pulled out and all the lines blurred.
A large part of that is that notional function of the “immigration crackdown” falls logically in ICE's domain, and this was the justification for massively increasing ICE funding, but CBP (and particularly the Border Patrol) having much more of the no-rules culture that was sought for the operation, leading to CBP and Border Patrol personnel taking key roles in the operation (which is why, until he became something of a political scapegoat for the Administration policy, a Border Patrol area commander got redesignated a "commander at large" and then given operational command not just of Border Patrol involvement but the notionally ICE-led operation.)
That trend of blurred lines has been going on for quite a while. Iirc a big callout of the 9/11 commission report was lack of communication between the FBI and the CIA. Even on the local side increasingly it seems every major crime gets a mixture of various federal, state and local law enforcement response.
A notable case was the Uvalde school massacre, which only ended when a border patrol tactical team (believe from the BORTAC group you mentioned) took over from dithering local forces. This was a major example, but interagency collaboration has also become routine in far less dire circumstances.
The militarization and blurred lines have thus become a feature not a bug. And it won't be reformed simply by having the current administration fade into the rearview mirror. It would be beneficial I think though if current excesses led to a more holistic introspection and reform, but we'll see.
The CIA and FBI had been deliberately separated, after the Church Commission found many, many abuses.
The Patriot Act removed and lowered many of the barriers. And now we're back to what the Church Commission found.
In my own country the border guard is part of the military- its a special form of military police. They also protect embassies for some reason.
Trust me the US does not have a patent on bureaucracy... Over the centuries things just develop. One can only assume it made sense once.
Technology wise, I’m more interested to have a platform or site that tracks the people who build these technologies and apps, rather than the runner boy in the streets. Those people have no morals or ethics, I want to know them and know their names/company names if contractors, so I never work with them or hire them or share any sort of collaboration with them.
And we thought the UK jailing people for postage fraud based on a faulty AI was bad...
I don't think that's anywhere close to an accurate description of the UK's recent post office scandal?
I haven't seen AI feature in any reporting. Rather, the software had bugs, some people decided the software couldn't be wrong and convinced others to the point of conviction?
Indeed, that scandal vastly predated AI everywhere, and was just vanilla consultant-grade software (i.e. trash) coupled with vast incompetence at every stage.
Incompetence is not sufficient to explain that case. Many high level leaders were aware of deficiencies in the software and wanted to prosecute anyway. That is active malice or indifference to human suffering.
I wonder when it will sink in for the average (especially non-white) American citizen that you are one false positive in an algorithm away from being arrested and detained / deported. If you’re lucky there will be a public outcry large enough that you’re released (like 5 year old Liam Ramos). Given expectations built into the constitution, this is should be disturbing. As a white, upper middle class, multigenerational citizen of the US, I find ICE’s actions disturbing at a fundamental level. Probably because I can extrapolate to the logical conclusion of this. Other people are extrapolating as well and it wouldn’t surprise me if continued ICE actions spur a public rebellion against surveillance of all forms, after seeing how it can be combined with a lawless federal government to subvert basic rights. I also think it will result in a backlash against private prisons in general as people then extrapolate from the ICE situation to the daily reality faced by primarily black men when interacting with the police. With a simple head nod, the cops can plant evidence and present a narrative to a judge and jury that puts you away for 20 years over nothing more than a dirty look at a cop.
If you think carrying a form of ID or passport will save you from ICE, I just want you to imagine a scenario where you are alone with several federal agents who, when provided with your proof of citizenship, light it on fire with a match and throw you in a van. Papers are just physical objects and unless ICE is wearing 24/7 streaming body cams, the above scenario could happen to literally anyone.
Papers are not just physical objects. The issuing agency records your details and the date of issuance. This is why cops don't boost their citation numbers by shredding your driver's license.
> This is why cops don't boost their citation numbers by shredding your driver's license.
The cops are issuing a citation, which you can contest in a court with a reference to that agency record. ICE has a habit of snatching people off the streets and stashing them in not-quite-black sites in Texas or Florida until they can book them on a private airplane to Guatemala.
I was told in a Know Your Rights training to carry copies of documents, so they can't steal / burn the originals.
Readers, whatever you're doing right now is what you would be doing during the rise of Nazi Germany... Be kind, be a good neighbor, don't talk to cops.
If things get worse we’ll need to wear body cams live-streaming to the cloud at all times to ensure our rights are upheld. Now that I think about it - not a bad product idea!
Anecdotally I've seen a significant uptick in folks installing dash cams in their cars.
There was a local incident where ICE drove erratically to make it look as though a legal observer initiated a crash. They then called and lied to the local police department. The activist was then released when he provided dash cam footage proving that they lied about the incident. https://lataco.com/oxnard-dash-cam-ice-crash
This is just one more thing in a time of all the things. When all this backlash comes to roost at techs door this site I expect will be shocked. How could the average American confuse the rich VCs with the moloch worshiping pedophiles and the fascist government populists?
When the giant finally wakes in America it won't be reasonable or well targeted. I'm reminded that violence in gang neighborhoods is modeled as a contaigen. Have we ever seen a violence "pandemic"?
Which I guess is why Zuck has been building compounds.
I can just imagine "not hotdog" tech demo they showed Trump and Hesgeth.
The only training image is the skin tone chart from Family Guy.