Immigrants aren’t the only people at risk. With Trump pursuing “retribution” against his political enemies, Clearview offers a range of frightening applications. “It creates a really disturbingly powerful tool for police that can identify nearly every person at a protest or a reproductive health facility or a house of worship with just photos of those people’s faces,” says Cahn.
No federal laws regulate facial recognition, and many federal agencies have deployed Clearview for years with little accountability. Consider that the FBI—now run by Kash Patel, who has claimed FBI agents incited January 6, pledged to target journalists, and penned a book containing the names of officials he planned to settle scores with—is another major federal customer. Patel’s new deputy director, Dan Bongino, is a conspiratorial right-wing influencer who has used violent rhetoric about liberals and called for jailing Democrats. (The FBI declined to comment on its use of Clearview or on Bongino’s extremist views.)
Records obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and shared with Mother Jones indicate that ICE has mainly used Clearview in its Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) division, which traditionally conducts criminal probes into human trafficking and drug smuggling. But during Trump’s first term, HSI agents were deeply involved in deportation actions alongside ERO teams, participating in aggressive raids in sanctuary cities and sometimes arresting hundreds of undocumented workers in a day. Now, the units are teaming up again to round up immigrants.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of local law enforcement departments have also embraced Clearview with even looser oversight. Clearview’s user code of conduct states that its search results are “not intended nor permitted to be used as admissible evidence in a court of law or any court filing.” But cops have used the search results, and nothing else, to secure warrants, rather than as leads to support further investigation. This practice has led to wrongful arrests and risks putting every American, not just every immigrant, in a permanent police lineup.