Legislation is response to allegations federal agents are cataloging protesters and building databases of individuals engaged in Frist Amendment-protected activity

 

Written by: Anthony Kimery

Released: 5 February 2026

From: Biometricupdate.com

 

Democratic lawmakers on Wednesday introduced sweeping legislation that would bar Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) from using facial recognition and other biometric identification technologies.

 

The senators behind the bill framed their proposal as a direct response to an accelerating surveillance apparatus under the Trump administration and mounting evidence that federal immigration agencies are monitoring and intimidating protesters exercising their constitutional right to peacefully protest.

 

Meanwhile, Democrats are also threatening to block funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) when it expires in two weeks unless there are “dramatic changes” and “real accountability” for federal law enforcement agencies carrying out the White House’s now widely unpopular immigration enforcement agenda.

 

The new legislation, the ICE Out of My Face Act, was introduced by Edward J. Markey, Jeff Merkley, Ron Wyden, and Pramila Jayapal. It would prohibit ICE and CBP from acquiring or deploying facial recognition systems and other biometric identification tools.

 

It would also require deletion of biometric data previously collected for those purposes and allow individuals and state attorneys general to pursue civil penalties for violations.

 

The proposal comes amid escalating concern on Capitol Hill that immigration enforcement agencies are using biometric surveillance to track, profile, and deter lawful protest and dissent, rather than narrowly targeting immigration-related investigations.

 

In announcing the bill, Markey accused the administration of weaponizing surveillance technologies to punish political opposition rather than enhance public safety, warning that facial recognition has become a tool of intimidation incompatible with democratic norms.

 

“ICE and CBP agents are using facial recognition technologies to track, target, and surveil individuals across the country,” Markey said. “The Trump administration isn’t deploying these tools to maintain public safety. They are doing so to silence lawful speech and to punish dissent … Big Brother has no place in a democracy, and we will not allow these Orwellian tools to take root here.”

 

“We are at an incredibly dangerous moment in this country, where overzealous and overly violent ICE and Border Patrol agents are increasing their use of biometric identification systems. This has become a surveillance state with militarized federal troops on our streets to terrorize and intimidate U.S. citizens and residents alike,” Jayapal added.

 

That argument is reinforced by a letter Markey sent earlier this week to ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons in which he demanded immediate clarification on whether DHS is maintaining a database of individuals protesting ICE operations.

 

In his letter, Markey said repeated statements by ICE agents and senior Trump administration officials suggest DHS may be cataloging U.S. citizens engaged in peaceful protest and labeling them as “domestic terrorists,” a practice he said would constitute a grave violation of the First Amendment if confirmed.

 

The letter details a series of incidents lawmakers say point to a coordinated effort to monitor and intimidate protesters.

 

Markey cited public remarks by Trump’s appointed “border czar,” Tom Homan, who said he was punishing for a database of individuals arrested at protests and suggested the government would “make them famous” by publicizing their identities to employers, neighbors, and schools.

 

Homan already faces allegations of having taken a $50,000 bribe in a sting operation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The investigation was killed by Trump’s Department of Justice.

 

Markey’s letter references an incident in Portland, Maine in which a masked ICE agent was caught on video telling a woman legally filming ICE activity in public that her personal information would be entered into a “little database” ICE has because she was now considered a “domestic terrorist.”

 

Trump himself has repeatedly used inflammatory language to describe individuals and movements who oppose his policies or federal enforcement actions as “highly paid lunatics, agitators, and insurrectionists.”

 

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem described Alex Pretti, the Minneapolis ICU nurse killed by Border Patrol agents, as a “domestic terrorist.” White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller – the architect of Trump’s immigration crackdown – called Pretti “an assassin” who “tried to murder federal agents,” a label Vice President JD Vance has also used to denigrate Pretti.

 

According to Markey’s letter, internal ICE guidance circulated to agents temporarily deployed to Minneapolis instructed personnel to collect “all images, license plates, identifications, and general information on hotels, agitators, protestors, etc., so we can capture it all in one consolidated form.”

 

Markey said such directives encourage broad, suspicionless collection of personal data about individuals engaged in constitutionally protected activity, without clear legal authority of safeguards.

 

The ICE Out of My Face Act is designed to cut off the technological backbone that makes that kind of monitoring possible.

 

By banning biometric identification systems outright within ICE and CBP, the legislation would dismantle tools that allow agents to identify individuals in the field using mobile facial recognition applications, scan faces against government databases or retrospectively identify protesters using images gathered from surveillance cameras, social media, or third-party vendors.

 

The bill would also mandate the deletion of biometric data already collected for these purposes, addressing concerns that existing databases could continue to be repurposed even if future collection were curtailed.

 

Jayapal said the bill as an urgent response to what she described as a rapidly militarizing federal presence in U.S. cities, arguing that biometric surveillance has become inseparable from aggressive immigration enforcement tactics that spill into the lives of citizens and lawful residents alike.

 

Merkley and Wyden echoed those concerns, warning that facial recognition technologies, when deployed without strict oversight, enable warrantless mass surveillance that chills speech and erodes basic civil liberties.

 

The legislation has drawn endorsements from a broad coalition of civil liberties and human rights organizations, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Human Rights First.

 

Civil rights advocates argue that facial recognition is inherently dangerous even when marketed as accurate or well-regulated, pointing to its history of misuse by authoritarian governments and its disproportionate impact on immigrants, communities of color, journalists, and protesters.

 

In statements supporting the bill, advocates emphasized that ICE and CBP operate with limited transparency and have repeatedly resisted congressional oversight, making them particularly ill-suited to wield technologies capable of persistent, real-time identification and tracking.

 

Several groups linked the proposed ban to DHS’s broader investments in surveillance infrastructure, including mobile biometric tools, license plate readers, predictive analytics, and aerial surveillance platforms.

 

Markey’s letter to ICE underscores that the legislation is part of a longer-running effort to rein in DHS surveillance practices.

 

Over the past year, he has pressed DHS leadership to halt the use of ICE’s Mobile Fortify biometric phone application, questioned CBP’s use of license plate readers and predictive algorithms to monitor Americans’ movements, and raised alarms about drone surveillance deployed against protesters in Los Angeles.

 

In each case, Markey has argued that the technologies are being deployed in ways that outpace legal guardrails and threaten constitutional rights.

 

Whether the ICE Out of My Face Act advances in a divided Congress remains uncertain, but its introduction marks one of the most direct legislative challenges yet to the expansion of biometric surveillance within federal immigration enforcement.

 

And by tying the bill explicitly to allegations of protest monitoring and intimidation, its sponsors are seeking to reframe facial recognition not as a neutral law enforcement tool, but as a structural threat to free expression and democratic participation when placed in the hands of agencies they say have shown “utter disdain for the law.”