The tools can also be used against ICE officers, said a critic.
By Catholics for Catholics
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is growing its use of advanced technology, but it risks having the tools backfire on them and putting their agents at risk, a legislator said.
According to Newsmax, Politico reported that critics also forewarned the government’s actions could lead to a considerable growth of domestic surveillance that goes far beyond rounding up illegal immigrants, but did not concede that the same technology is also being used against ICE officers.
ICE is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on technology such as drones, license plate readers, facial recognition software, social media monitoring tools, and data services created to find where people live and work, federal procurement records show.
Some GOP members have shown support for ICE’s purchase of surveillance technology, stressing that its use must conform with constitutional protections and existing privacy laws. Nevertheless, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., warned that the issue goes both ways.
Blackburn said in September issues like facial recognition technology are being used to recognize and imperil ICE officers, contending that publicly accessible tools are being weaponized against federal law enforcement.
In a letter to Giorgi Gobronidze, CEO of PimEye, Blackburn wrote that she was raising “deep concern with PimEyes’s artificial intelligence facial recognition technology and the harm it poses to individuals’ safety and privacy,” quoting reports that activists used the tool to identify at least 20 ICE officers by name and photograph.
“Online foreign activists should not be weaponizing generative AI to threaten and endanger our federal officers and their families,” Blackburn wrote, warning that reverse image search systems “can be used by gangs like MS-13 and Tren De Aragua to target ICE agents and their loved ones.”
Still, the investments in the technology align with President Donald Trump’s push for aggressive immigration enforcement, including what he has described as the largest deportation effort in U.S. history.
But Blackburn pointed to Department of Homeland Security data demonstrating that, as of July 2025, ICE agents suffered “a nearly 700 percent increase in assaults,” and said the release of agents’ identities places them “directly in harm’s way.”
Contending that the technology raises broader risks, Blackburn wrote that a “publicly accessible digital library of individuals’ lives and likenesses in the wrong hands poses unthinkable risks,” including doxxing, stalking, and child exploitation.
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