How ICE Uses Driver’s License Photos and DMV Databases

8/6/19 In NILC’s 2016 report summarizing documents we received as a result of a 2014 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and in our 2017 report Untangling the Immigration Enforcement Web, we describe how ICE asks DMVs to use their face-recognition systems to find people to target for deportation. These reports also describe the different ways ICE obtains DMV information. Last month, the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown Law School released documents confirming that ICE has asked DMVs in Utah, Vermont, and Washington to run face-recognition searches against their driver’s license photo databases.