DHS Has 1.2 Billion Face Photos. ICE Uses Them on the Street.

TL;DR: DHS's face-scanning app doesn't search 200 million photos. It searches 1.2 billion. Bloomberg obtained federal records showing the database feeding ICE's Mobile Fortify is six times larger than previously disclosed. The system is built by Japanese tech giant NEC under a $23.9 million contract. ICE agents have used it over 100,000 times since June 2025, on immigrants, citizens, teenagers, and protesters. Your photo stays in the system for 15 years. You can't say no.

Six Times Worse Than We Thought

When we first covered Mobile Fortify in January, we reported what was publicly known: ICE agents were scanning faces against roughly 200 million DHS images. Bad enough.

On February 2, Bloomberg News reported the real number. Federal procurement records show the database contains 1.2 billion face images that have been "feature-extracted": converted into searchable biometric templates by NEC's facial recognition algorithms ^[1].

That's not 200 million. That's 1.2 billion. More photos than there are people in the Western Hemisphere.

And every one of them is searchable by any ICE agent carrying a government-issued smartphone.

Where 1.2 Billion Faces Come From

The database isn't a single collection. It's a web of interconnected federal systems, each feeding photos into a central matching engine:

IDENT/HART: DHS's primary biometric repository holds 325+ million unique identities and 270+ million biometric records. Its next-gen replacement, HART, adds DNA and "non-obvious relationships" data.
State Department: Every passport photo. Every visa application photo. Every consular record.
FBI NCIC and NGI: Criminal mugshots, missing persons, plus hundreds of millions of images from state DMVs, background checks, and visa applications.
CBP Traveler Verification Service: Photos from airport arrivals, land border crossings, and cruise ports.
CBP TECS: Border screening system records.
State DMV databases: Photos from participating states' driver's license systems.

Applied for a passport? You're in there. Crossed a border? You're in there. Got a driver's license in a participating state? In there. Visited the US on a visa ten years ago? Still in there.

The 1.2 billion figure refers specifically to images processed by NEC's AIM XM product inside both OBIM/IDENT and OBIM/HART. It's the total pool of faces that Mobile Fortify can match against when an ICE agent points a phone at someone's face on the street ^[1].

NEC: The Company Behind the Scanner

Until January 2026, DHS kept the vendor's identity quiet. Then DHS's own AI Use Case Inventory outed them: NEC Corporation, a Japanese tech conglomerate with $28 billion in annual revenue, builds and maintains Mobile Fortify's facial recognition engine ^[2].

The contract: $23.9 million, spanning 2020-2023, granting "unlimited facial matching across platforms." NEC's NeoFace system, described as "an AI-driven pattern recognition system that leverages deep learning models to transform raw visual data into biometric templates," is what converts a phone-camera snapshot into a database query across 1.2 billion faces ^[2].

NEC has subsidiaries in Argentina, Australia, China, India, and Malaysia. A company with offices in five countries built the face-scanning tool that ICE uses to determine if Americans are actually American.

How It Works in the Field

An ICE agent approaches someone. Without asking, the agent holds up a government smartphone and snaps a photo. Mobile Fortify sends the image to CBP's backend biometric systems, where NEC's algorithm compares it against 1.2 billion face templates.

Within seconds, the app returns possible matches with names, dates of birth, immigration status, nationality, and deportation orders. A "Super Query" feature simultaneously searches the FBI's NCIC, Nlets (state warrant databases), TECS, and SEACATS ^[3].

Since deployment around June 2025, it's been used more than 100,000 times. The app was deployed while still in beta testing. It earned a "high-impact" AI designation that requires extensive assessments before deployment, but ICE reported those assessments as "in progress" and deployed it anyway ^[3].

You Can't Say No

A DHS Privacy Threshold Analysis states it plainly: "ICE does not provide the opportunity for individuals to decline or consent to the collection and use of biometric data." ^[4]

Unlike TSA facial recognition, where you can still opt out, there is no opt-out for Mobile Fortify. If an ICE agent wants your face, they take it. Citizen or not.

Your photo stays in the system for 15 years. Even if the encounter leads to nothing, no arrest, no charges, confirmed US citizenship, the scan is retained. Illinois's lawsuit calls this "a de facto interior biometric registry untethered from warrants, consent, or individualized suspicion" ^[5].

The Safeguards That Were Deleted

DHS once had guardrails for this kind of technology. In 2023, the Biden administration issued Directive 026-11, described as "the most extensive facial recognition safeguards of any federal agency." It required bias testing, privacy office oversight, and citizen opt-out rights ^[5].

On or before February 14, 2025, DHS rescinded the directive. Its text was removed from the DHS website. The Trump administration didn't replace it with anything ^[5].

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, which was supposed to provide independent oversight, has been "virtually incapacitated, its membership hollowed out" ^[5].

A full Privacy Impact Assessment was required before deployment. ICE and CBP decided existing documentation was sufficient and never published one ^[3].

When the Algorithm Meets the Street

This isn't hypothetical. Here's what Mobile Fortify looks like in practice:

Aurora, Illinois: Border Patrol agents stopped two teenagers near a high school. When one claimed US citizenship without ID, an agent asked a colleague, "Can you do facial?" and pointed a phone at the teenager's face ^[4].

Chicago: ICE agents surrounded a driver who declined to show ID. An officer pointed his phone at the man's face without permission. When the driver said "I'm an American citizen, so leave me alone," the officer responded: "We just got to verify that" ^[4].

Minneapolis: A 20-year-old Somali American citizen named Mubashir Khalif Hussen was stopped, refused to show his passport card, was forced into a vehicle, driven seven miles from the city, and required to undergo facial scanning before being released in winter conditions ^[6].

Minneapolis: A 56-year-old ICE watchdog volunteer named Nicole Cleland was approached by an agent who addressed her by name, despite never meeting her. The agent told her he had facial recognition technology and that his body camera was recording. Three days later, Cleland's Global Entry and TSA PreCheck privileges were revoked without explanation ^[6].

Dual misidentification: One woman was scanned by Mobile Fortify twice in the same encounter. The app returned two entirely different names. The system that ICE treats as authoritative couldn't even agree with itself ^[5].

From Street Scans to Protest Surveillance

Mobile Fortify isn't staying in its lane. At least seven American citizens in and around Minneapolis were told by ICE agents that they were being recorded with facial recognition technology during anti-ICE protests. None gave consent ^[6].

An ICE agent photographed a Maine legal observer's license plate and stated: "Because we have a nice little database. And now you're considered a domestic terrorist" ^[6].

The FBI has used facial recognition on still images extracted from publicly posted protest videos, generating identifications that appeared in federal criminal complaints. Protest footage posted by private citizens gets ingested into federal biometric systems without warrants or notice ^[7].

As ACLU senior policy analyst Jay Stanley put it: the combination of ICE and face recognition is "a marriage made in hell." The border, he warned, "is everywhere now" ^[4].

What Congress Is Doing (and Not Doing)

Nine senators, led by Edward Markey, Ron Wyden, and Jeff Merkley, joined by Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Chris Van Hollen, Bernie Sanders, Adam Schiff, and Tina Smith, have demanded ICE stop using Mobile Fortify. ICE didn't respond to their September 2025 deadline. Or to the November follow-up ^[8].

In the House, Rep. Bennie Thompson introduced the Realigning Mobile Phone Biometrics for American Privacy Protection Act, which would ban Mobile Fortify outside ports of entry, require deletion of citizen data within 12 hours, and prohibit sharing with state and local police ^[9].

Illinois and Chicago filed a 103-page federal lawsuit on January 12, 2026, arguing the app exceeds DHS's statutory authority and violates constitutional privacy protections ^[5].

None of this has stopped ICE from using Mobile Fortify every day.

The Number That Matters

Remember: the original reporting said 200 million photos. That was alarming enough to generate congressional pushback, federal lawsuits, and civil liberties investigations.

The actual number is 1.2 billion.

That's roughly one face image for every three people on Earth searchable by ICE agents who don't need a warrant, don't ask consent, and can't be refused. Built by a Japanese corporation. Deployed in beta. Missing its required oversight assessments. With the safeguards deleted.

Nathan Freed Wessler of the ACLU called it "dangerous, totally unprecedented, and blatantly illegal" ^[4].

He's being polite.

Sources

Published: February 5, 2026