Newly Released Footage Highlights ICE’s Use of Facial Recognition Technology |
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The Guardian has published newly-released body camera footage showing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents using facial recognition technology to identify farm workers in Oregon after violently arresting them.
The videos were initially released in court in an ongoing class action lawsuit against ICE’s arrest practices – which include arresting people without a warrant, manufacturing paperwork and creating warrants after making arrests, using quotas, and targeting entire neighborhoods. These practices have become known as “arrest first, justify later.”
The footage, which is from an ICE arrest in October 2025, shows an ICE agent using his phone to take an image of the face of one of the detained farm workers.
This followed video footage of ICE officers stopping a van that was heading to a job site, shattering the van’s windows, and violently detaining the seven farm workers inside it. When one of the farm workers attempts to call 911 and ask for a lawyer, an ICE agent demands that she turn her phone off, and exits the video.
“She wants to lawyer up,” one ICE agent says to other agents. “She doesn’t want to identify herself, we’ll just take her.”
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When the woman repeats that she wants to call the police, the ICE agent says, “What are the police going to do? We are the police.”
Agents then pull her out of the van, as the woman says, “This can’t happen to us. They’re using force.”
After detaining the workers and restraining them outside of a building, an ICE agent is seen holding a phone up to one worker’s face,........