This article is a partnership between Reveal and 404 Media.
On an ordinary morning, 23-year-old Jesus Gutiérrez was making his way home from a Chicago gym when something caught his attention — an unmarked gray Cadillac SUV, conspicuously absent of license plates, idling nearby. He continued walking, dismissing the vehicle without much thought. Moments later, the SUV pulled to the curb and two men stepped out to intercept him.
The men identified themselves as federal immigration officials and immediately instructed him not to flee. They launched into a rapid sequence of questions: his destination, his point of origin, and whether he was carrying government-issued identification.
Gutiérrez holds US citizenship — a fact he communicated directly to the agents. Without physical identification on his person, he frantically searched his phone for a digital copy. Rather than waiting, the agents placed him inside the vehicle, where two additional officers were already stationed, and restrained him in handcuffs. The directive was blunt: remain silent.
Facing the absence of documentary proof, the agents pivoted to a different verification method entirely. They photographed Gutiérrez's face. Within minutes, the technology returned its verdict. "Oh yeah, he's right. He's saying the right thing. He does got papers," Gutiérrez recalled the agents announcing after reviewing the results.
The ordeal Gutiérrez described to Reveal represents a concrete, ground-level illustration of a surveillance practice that federal authorities have now confirmed to 404 Media is being deployed nationwide: real-time biometric scanning of individuals using a facial recognition application that surfaces personal data including full name, date of birth, immigration identification numbers, and active deportation orders. 404 Media previously obtained internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement communications exposing the agency's proprietary facial recognition platform, known as Mobile Fortify, and documented a series of social media recordings in which agents deployed the tool against members of the public in citizenship verification encounters.
Reveal has now spoken directly with an individual who appears to have been subjected to this biometric surveillance technology firsthand. To substantiate his citizenship status, Gutiérrez furnished Reveal with a copy of his US passport.
"You just grabbing, like, random people, dude," Gutiérrez told the agents after his face was processed through the system. He was eventually released after the agents drove him around for approximately one hour. The psychological impact lingered — for days afterward, he avoided leaving his home, including returning to the gym. He described the incident to his father as being "kidnapped."
"This is a flagrant violation of rights and incompatible with a free society," said Nathan Freed Wessler, deputy project director for the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. "Immigration agents have no business scanning our faces with this glitchy, privacy-destroying technology—especially after often stopping people based on nothing more than the color of their skin or the neighborhood they live in."
Mobile Fortify is deployed on government-issued mobile devices made available to both ICE and Customs and Border Protection personnel. When an agent captures a facial scan, the application cross-references a sweeping constellation of federal databases — including systems operated by the FBI and a secondary database that flags outstanding state-level warrants — according to technical user manuals reviewed by 404 Media. The platform benchmarks each scan against a repository containing a reported 200 million images, as disclosed in internal ICE documentation examined by 404 Media.
"The photograph shown [in the app's results] is the photograph that was taken during the individual's most recent encounter with CBP, however the matching will be against all pictures CBP may maintain on the individual," stated an internal Department of Homeland Security document obtained by 404 Media. In a significant technological pivot, the system — originally engineered to authenticate international travelers at ports of entry — has been redirected inward, now operating against individuals encountered on domestic streets.
The official justification for Mobile Fortify, as outlined in that same internal document, centers on equipping immigration enforcement personnel with the capability to identify individuals subject to removal proceedings. However, the document itself concedes that the technology may be applied to US citizens, precisely as occurred in Gutiérrez's encounter.
"It is conceivable that a photo taken by an agent using the Mobile Fortify mobile application could be that of someone other than an alien, including U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents," the document reads.
Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, previously disclosed to 404 Media that ICE has established a policy of treating the application's output as superseding traditional identity documentation. "ICE officials have told us that an apparent biometric match by Mobile Fortify is a 'definitive' determination of a person's status and that an ICE officer may ignore evidence of American citizenship—including a birth certificate—if the app says the person is an alien," he said. "ICE using a mobile biometrics app in ways its developers at CBP never intended or tested is a frightening, repugnant, and unconstitutional attack on Americans' rights and freedoms."
404 Media has documented additional cases in which ICE and CBP personnel have employed the facial recognition platform to establish identity and citizenship. In one incident apparently occurring in Chicago, a Border Patrol officer stopped two young men on bicycles and turned to a colleague with the request: "Can you do facial?" That officer proceeded to scan one of the individuals, as captured in a video circulated on social media. In a separate incident, a contingent of ICE agents surrounded a man in a vehicle who asserted his American citizenship. "Alright, we just got to verify that," an agent responded, before a second officer aimed a phone camera at the man and instructed him to remove his hat. "If you could take your hat off, it would be a lot quicker," the officer said. "I'm going to run your information."
In Gutiérrez's case, there is little indication that he was stopped for any reason beyond the color of his skin. He is of Mexican descent, he said. Stops of people based on their race, use of Spanish, or location (such as a car wash or bus stop) have become known among critics as "Kavanaugh stops," after Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh justified the method in a September opinion.
"The Government sometimes makes brief investigative stops to check the immigration status of those who gather in locations where people are hired for day jobs; who work or appear to work in jobs such as construction, landscaping, agriculture, or car washes that often do not require paperwork and are therefore attractive to illegal immigrants; and who do not speak much if any English," the opinion says. (Gutiérrez speaks Spanish but conducted his interview with Reveal in English.) "If the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a U.S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, they promptly let the individual go. If the individual is illegally in the United States, the officers may arrest the individual and initiate the process for removal."
The ACLU's Wessler added: "In the United States, we should be free to go about our business without government agents scanning our faces, accessing our personal information, saving our photos for years, and putting us at risk of misidentifications and wrongful detentions. ICE and CBP's use of Mobile Fortify on the streets of America should end immediately."
DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin responded with a statement declining specificity: "DHS is not going to confirm or deny law enforcement capabilities or methods." CBP acknowledged that it developed the application to support ICE field operations and confirmed the tool has been deployed by ICE across multiple locations throughout the country.
A CBP spokesperson added in a statement, "Mobile Fortify is a law enforcement app developed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection for ICE agents and officers. It helps field personnel gather information during immigration inspections, but agents must consider all circumstances before deciding on someone's immigration status. CBP personnel working with ICE teams can access the app after completing required training. Further details cannot be shared due to law enforcement sensitivities."
Gutiérrez recalled that as his encounter drew to a close — while he remained confined in the vehicle — the agents were laughing.
How a US Citizen Was Scanned With ICE's Facial Recognition Tech is a story from Reveal. Reveal is a registered trademark of The Center for Investigative Reporting and is a 501(c)(3) tax exempt organization.