In case you needed further evidence that we’re living in the worst version of a cyberpunk dystopia, immigration officers are now scanning civilians’ faces to index them in a government database.
Don’t take our word for it — just listen to the officers themselves. A video shared by freelance journalist Brian Allen appears to show a masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent scan a couple’s faces with his phone.
“It’s not illegal to record,” the woman filming the ICE agents says after the agent points his phone at her. “Exactly, that’s what we’re doing,” another officer says.
“Why are you taking my information down?” the woman behind the camera asks.
The officer responds: “because we have a nice little database, and now you’re considered domestic terrorists.”
“For video taping you? Are you crazy?” the woman shoots back before the clip ends.
HOLY SMOKES: ICE agents in Maine just photographed a civilian’s face and name and said they’re putting it in a database.
When the woman asked why, the agent’s response was basically: “Now you’re considered a domestic terrorist.”
This is intimidation. Not law enforcement. pic.twitter.com/68dEiVd2wa
— Brian Allen (@allenanalysis) January 23, 2026
Whether the two were actually registered in an ICE database is unclear. But the agency is definitely using facial identification tech in at least some ways. Back in October of last year, 404 Media reported that ICE was scanning suspects’ faces to check whether they were citizens, a development which Cato Institute senior fellow Patrick Eddington warned at the time could cascade into a constitutional crisis.
If what the officer in the video says is true, the agency may be using the tech for even further overreach.
In a case flagged by journalist Julie DiCaro, a Minnesota woman alleged in a legal filing that an ICE agent approached her vehicle as she was observing them, addressed her by name, and warned her that ICE had “facial recognition technology.” Three days later, the woman says she received a notice that her Global Entry or TSA-Pre Check status had been revoked.
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