How ICE Already Knows Who Minneapolis Protesters Are Agents use facial recognition, social media monitoring and other tech tools not only to identify undocumented immigrants but also to track protesters, current and former officials said. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/technology/tech-ice-facial-recognition-palantir.html Accessed: 2 Feb 2026 at 1226 PST

On the morning of Jan. 10, Nicole Cleland was in her car trailing an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent through Richfield, Minn., her hometown. Suddenly, the agent turned into a series of one-way streets and stopped, getting out of his white Dodge Ram, said Ms. Cleland, who volunteers with a local watchdog group that observes the activity of immigration officers. The agent then walked over to Ms. Cleland's car and surprised her by addressing her as Nicole. "He said he had facial recognition and that his body camera was on," said Ms. Cleland, 56, who had not met the agent before. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/technology/tech-ice-facial-recognition-palantir.html Accessed: 2 Feb 2026 at 1226 PST

Ms. Cleland was one of at least seven American citizens told by ICE agents this month that they were being recorded with facial recognition technology in and around Minneapolis, according to local activists and videos posted to social media, which were verified by The New York Times. None had given consent for their faces to be recorded. Facial recognition is just one technology tool that ICE has deployed in Minneapolis, where thousands of agents are conducting a crackdown. The technologies are being used not only to identify undocumented immigrants but also to track citizens who have protested ICE's presence, said three current and former officials of the Department of Homeland Security who were not authorized to discuss confidential matters. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/technology/tech-ice-facial-recognition-palantir.html Accessed: 2 Feb 2026 at 1226 PST

ICE is using two facial recognition programs in Minnesota, they said, including one made by the tech company Clearview AI and a newer program, Mobile Fortify. The agency is also using cellphone and social media tools to monitor people's online activity and potentially hack into phones. And agents are tapping into a database, built by the data analytics company Palantir, that combines government and commercial data to identify realtime locations for individuals they are pursuing, the current and former officials said. "The technologies are being deployed, or appear to be deployed, in a much more aggressive way than we have seen in the past," said Nathan Freed Wessler, a lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union, which has sued the Homeland Security Department over the immigration operation in Minneapolis. "The conglomeration of all these technologies together is giving the government unprecedented abilities." https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/technology/tech-ice-facial-recognition-palantir.html Accessed: 2 Feb 2026 at 1226 PST