ICE taps state and local police to access Flock license-plate camera data

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has found a workaround to legally monitor certain undocumented drivers by leveraging Flock’s license-plate reading cameras through state and local law-enforcement partners. Flock, an Atlanta company whose automated readers are installed in over 5,000 agencies across 6,000 communities, records plate numbers and matches them against police databases using artificial intelligence, without imaging drivers’ faces.

ICE cannot purchase Flock services directly, but it receives data when local or state police pull footage and share it under cooperative agreements that now exist in more than 2,300 jurisdictions. The arrangement, which started before the prior administration, has grown as additional police departments sign contracts with Flock and agree to assist ICE, especially in states like Texas and Florida where troopers actively support immigration enforcement.

In sanctuary areas such as New York or Seattle, local officers refuse to run plates for ICE. Critics argue the system contributes to a broader surveillance landscape, even though Flock’s website claims it does not share data with ICE by default.