In June 2025, leaked ICE emails and a user manual reported by 404 Media revealed Mobile Fortify, an app installed on government-issued phones that lets agents photograph people and collect contactless fingerprints and faceprints. The app was initially presented without a publicly identified developer; the Department of Homeland Security’s 2025 AI Use Case Inventory, disclosed in January 2026, identified NEC Corporation as the vendor. Unlike systems that search public images, Mobile Fortify can query federally linked repositories, including DHS’s IDENT database, which contains more than 270 million biometric records, along with CBP, State Department, FBI, and law-enforcement systems.
The program drew constitutional and accuracy concerns because ICE says individuals cannot decline scans and that captured images may be retained for 15 years, despite the agency not having completed a Privacy Impact Assessment for Mobile Fortify. Facial-recognition systems are known to generate false positives and can perform worse on darker skin tones; ICE has previously detained a U.S. citizen after incorrectly determining he lacked lawful status. In a January 19, 2026 report, 404 Media described a court case in which the app returned two different, allegedly incorrect names for the same woman, identified as “MJMA.” Senators including Cory Booker, Ron Wyden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and others demanded deployment, testing, developer, and rights-protection details in letters sent in June and November 2025; the later letter followed ICE’s failure to answer by the October 2 deadline.
