How ICE Is Watching Your Thanksgiving Drive
ICE and Border Patrol are using license plate cameras for extensive domestic surveillance.
Do you have a long drive home after your family feast this week? The feds might be watching you. Recent reporting from the Associated Press and 404 Media reveals just how thorough federal surveillance of the highways has gotten, especially from immigration authorities.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been demonstrating a system called Mobile Companion to instantly scan a vehicle's license plate and cross-reference it with sightings across the country along with driver's license data, credit header data, marriage records, vehicle ownership, and voter registrations, 404 Media reported earlier this month.
Mobile Companion is designed as an app that agents can use from their cellphones, integrated with a desktop application called Vehicle Manager. The government materials obtained by 404 Media advertise the app's use by Enforcement and Removal Operations, the division of ICE responsible for rounding up and deporting immigrants, rather than criminal investigations.
The data for Mobile Companion come from Motorola, a telecom company that owns two different license plate camera services, 404 Media reported. The Drug Enforcement Administration has also been buying private license plate camera data, according to new reporting by the Associated Press that Reason covered this week.
More disturbingly, Border Patrol has been running its own parallel network of hidden license plate cameras, which the Associated Press found inside of traffic cones, roadside crash barrels, and electrical boxes. Although Border Patrol began deploying the cameras in 2017 as a temporary measure to catch smugglers near the border, the cameras have since morphed into a permanent domestic surveillance program.
Border Patrol works with local police to identify suspicious "patterns of life" and pull over motorists, often on deceptive pretexts. In a few cases, they've nabbed clearly innocent drivers. In February 2025, truck driver Lorenzo Gutierrez Lugo was pulled over by police in Kingsville, Texas, ostensibly because he was going five miles per hour over the speed limit.
Court records showed that Gutierrez Lugo had actually been stopped at the behest of Border Patrol, which had been monitoring him and told police that he could be carrying contraband. They found nothing illegal, but did find thousands of dollars in cash, which had come from customers. The police arrested Gutierrez Lugo for money laundering and seized the cash. They didn't end up charging him, and eventually gave the cash back.
In a similar case from 2022, businessman Alek Schott was stopped by sheriff's deputies in Bexar County, Texas, based on a tip from Border Patrol, which had been monitoring Schott's movements. They also tore up Schott's car and found nothing. With the help of the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm, he is now suing for unreasonable search and seizure.
The lawsuit revealed the existence of a WhatsApp group chat called Northwest Highway, and the Associated Press filed a freedom of information request for chat logs. They revealed that Border Patrol agents and Texas police were extensively trading intelligence about drivers in the area, including the home addresses and social media profiles of U.S. citizens they stopped.
And the dragnet is not just at the U.S. border. Although Border Patrol has the strongest legal authority to conduct searches and seizures within 100 miles of the border—an area that civil libertarians have dubbed the "constitution-free zone"—some of the cameras were hundreds of miles inside U.S. soil. One of the cameras was located in a Phoenix suburb more than 120 miles north of the Mexican border. Another monitored traffic between Chicago and Gary, Indiana, more than 200 miles south of the Canadian border.
So remember, if you're traveling by car for the holidays, you may be driving under the watchful eye of Uncle Sam. Just hope that he doesn't find your travel plans suspicious.
