Here's the Company That Sold DHS ICE's Notorious Face Recognition App

On Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security published caller details astir Mobile Fortify, the facial designation app that national migration agents usage arsenic a method to place radical successful the field, undocumented immigrants and United States citizens alike. The details, including the institution down the app, were published arsenic portion of DHS’s 2025 AI Use Case Inventory, which national agencies are required to merchandise periodically.

The inventory includes 2 entries for Mobile Fortify—one for Customs and Border Protection, different for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—and says the app is successful the “deployment” signifier for both. CBP says that Mobile Fortify became “operational” astatine the opening of May past year, portion ICE got entree to it connected May 20, 2025. That day is astir a period earlier 404 Media archetypal reported connected the app’s existence.

The inventory besides identified the app’s vendor arsenic NEC, which had antecedently been chartless publicly. On its website, NEC advertises a facial designation solution called Reveal, which it says tin bash one-to-many searches oregon one-to-one matches against databases of immoderate size. CBP says the app’s vendor is NEC portion ICE notes it was developed partially successful house. A $23.9 cardinal declaration held betwixt NEC and the DHS from 2020 to 2023 states that DHS was utilizing NEC biometric matching products for “unlimited facial quantities, connected unlimited hardware platforms, and astatine unlimited locations.” NEC did not instantly respond to a petition for comment.

Both CBP and ICE accidental that the app is expected to assistance rapidly corroborate people’s identity, and ICE further says that it helps bash truthful successful the tract “when officers and agents indispensable enactment with constricted accusation and entree aggregate disparate systems.”

ICE says that the app tin seizure faces, “contactless” fingerprints, and photographs of individuality documents. The app sends that information to CBP “for submission to authorities biometric matching systems.” Those systems past usage AI to lucifer people’s faces and fingerprints with existing records, and instrumentality imaginable matches on with biographic information. ICE says that it besides extracts substance from individuality documents for “additional checks.” ICE says it doesn’t ain oregon interact straight with the AI models, and that those beryllium to CBP.

CBP says the “Vetting/Border Crossing Information/ Trusted Traveler Information” was utilized to either train, fine-tune, oregon measure the show of Mobile Fortify, but it didn’t specify which, and didn’t respond to a petition for clarification from WIRED.

CBP’s Trusted Traveler Programs see TSA Precheck and Global Entry. In a declaration earlier this month, a Minnesota pistillate said her Global Entry and TSA Precheck privileges had been revoked aft interacting with a national cause she was observing who told her they had “facial recognition.” In different declaration for a abstracted lawsuit, filed by the authorities of Minnesota, an idiosyncratic who was stopped and detained by national agents says an serviceman told them, “Whoever is the registered proprietor [of this vehicle] is going to person a amusive clip trying to question aft this.”

While CBP says determination are “sufficient monitoring protocols” successful spot for the app, ICE says that the improvement of monitoring protocols is successful progress, and that it volition place imaginable impacts during an AI interaction assessment. According to guidance from the Office of Management and Budget, which was issued earlier the inventory says the app was deployed for either CBP oregon ICE, agencies are expected to implicit an AI interaction appraisal before deploying immoderate high-impact usage case. Both CBP and ICE accidental the app is “high-impact” and “deployed.”

DHS, CBP and ICE did not respond to requests for comment.

The consequences of an incorrect lucifer tin beryllium devastating. 404 Media reported that a pistillate was detained aft being misidentified doubly by the app. ICE says that the improvement of an appeals process is “in-progress,” on with “steps has the bureau taken to consult and incorporated feedback from extremity users of this AI usage lawsuit and the public.”