Florida Used a Nationwide Surveillance Camera Network 250 Times To Aid in Immigration Arrests

Flock Safety’s 40,000 cameras present in over 5,000 communities across the U.S. are being used to detain undocumented immigrants, many of whom have no criminal history.

The state of Florida, which leads the country in partnerships with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), is using a nationwide surveillance network of over 40,000 automatic license plate reader (ALPR) cameras present in over 5,000 communities across the United States to aid in immigration-related arrests.  

Public records obtained by the Orlando Sentinel reveal that the Florida Highway Patrol (FHP) utilized Flock Safety ALPR camera data over 250 times between March 13 and May 5 (averaging about 32 times per week) for immigration-stated purposes. These searches spiked during "Operation Tidal Wave," a highly publicized, first-of-its-kind partnership between federal, state, and local law enforcement targeting undocumented individuals that led to the arrest of 1,120 people in Florida—37 percent of whom had no previous criminal arrests or convictions. 

Flock's camera network uses AI to provide real-time alerts of a license plate's and, by extension, a driver's, location across the United States. The 24/7 surveillance is marketed to cities, businesses, schools, and law enforcement agencies as a way to deter crime,  solve crimes such as carjackings, and find missing persons. Even though the company's policies prohibit the cameras from being used for immigration enforcement, a Flock representative told Vice in 2021 that if it were legal in a state, Flock would not be in a position to stop, or encourage, the state from using the technology for immigration-related purposes. 

Florida has no prohibition against law enforcement aiding ICE, and the FHP's search records confirm that the expansive Flock mass surveillance system is being used to assist in immigration arrests. 

Those who are part of the nationwide network have access to data gathered from all Flock cameras that have opted into the data-sharing capability, creating a centralized data hub of Americans' detailed movements. The lack of oversight on who has access to such sensitive data "would create enormous risks of privacy violations and other abuses," according to the American Civil Liberties Union.  

In addition to mounting privacy concerns, directing the FHP to use Flock data to help locate individuals for immigration-related offenses takes troopers away from their main objective—providing highway safety. "Every time you take somebody off the road to do something special, no matter what it is—it doesn't have to be immigration—it reduces the number of people there to do our primary duty," Spencer Ross, president of the Florida Highway Patrol Fraternal Order of Police, told the Sentinel. Ross said that adding more duties to an already understaffed agency comes at a cost to public safety. 

Renata Bozzetto, deputy director of Florida Immigrant Coalition, echoed these concerns and warned against law enforcement "diverting attention from public safety and from seeking real criminals or making sure that we are safe to terrifying the community and tearing people apart."

Florida's law enforcement agencies aren't the only ones tapping into Flock's surveillance system. As first reported by 404 Media in May, public records of the Danville, Illinois, police department's Flock data searches revealed that federal immigration authorities had gained informal access to Flock's trove of data through the police department's access to the information, with no warrant required. The knowledge that ICE and other Department of Homeland Security agents were potentially taking advantage of Flock's system data, despite state law prohibiting law enforcement from using ALPR data for immigration enforcement, raised serious civil rights and privacy concerns. 

Now, the FHP records confirm that immigration authorities are using Flock's mass surveillance capability to increase immigration-related arrests in Florida too, and conscripting unwitting Americans, whose data they are accessing, to inadvertently serve as informants in the process.