ICE, CBP Knew Facial Recognition App Couldn't Do What DHS Says It Could

That quote from the source wired article, does not allege that the DHS makes any claim that the app can itself verify anyone's identity.

Where has the DHS made any statement that the app does something that it does not do?

The closest thing I can find is from the 2025 DHS AI use case inventory, where the entry for Mobile fortify states it's benefits are:

"Utilizing facial comparison or fingerprint matching services, agents/officers in the field are able to quickly verify identity utilizing trusted source photos."

The claim is not that the app verifies someone's identity, but that it can potentially find trusted source photos that look similar to the person in question.

The officer could then evaluate the match, and make a determination to their own satisfaction that their subject is one and the same as the person in the database.

ICE was not “created from the criminal investigation arm of CBP and related agencies”, it was created at the same time, by the same law, as CBP and DHS, from some of the investigation and enforcement arms of INS and the Customs Service, with much of the rest of those agencies (including the Border Patrol, which had been one of the enforcement arm of INS) becoming CBP, and the routine "happy path" immigration functions of INS moving to USCIS under the Department of State.

> They are related but not the same. Under the current US regime, all the stops are being pulled out and all the lines blurred.

A large part of that is that notional function of the “immigration crackdown” falls logically in ICE's domain, and this was the justification for massively increasing ICE funding, but CBP (and particularly the Border Patrol) having much more of the no-rules culture that was sought for the operation, leading to CBP and Border Patrol personnel taking key roles in the operation (which is why, until he became something of a political scapegoat for the Administration policy, a Border Patrol area commander got redesignated a "commander at large" and then given operational command not just of Border Patrol involvement but the notionally ICE-led operation.)

That trend of blurred lines has been going on for quite a while. Iirc a big callout of the 9/11 commission report was lack of communication between the FBI and the CIA. Even on the local side increasingly it seems every major crime gets a mixture of various federal, state and local law enforcement response.

A notable case was the Uvalde school massacre, which only ended when a border patrol tactical team (believe from the BORTAC group you mentioned) took over from dithering local forces. This was a major example, but interagency collaboration has also become routine in far less dire circumstances.

The militarization and blurred lines have thus become a feature not a bug. And it won't be reformed simply by having the current administration fade into the rearview mirror. It would be beneficial I think though if current excesses led to a more holistic introspection and reform, but we'll see.

In my own country the border guard is part of the military- its a special form of military police. They also protect embassies for some reason.

Trust me the US does not have a patent on bureaucracy... Over the centuries things just develop. One can only assume it made sense once.

Indeed, that scandal vastly predated AI everywhere, and was just vanilla consultant-grade software (i.e. trash) coupled with vast incompetence at every stage.

> This is why cops don't boost their citation numbers by shredding your driver's license.

The cops are issuing a citation, which you can contest in a court with a reference to that agency record. ICE has a habit of snatching people off the streets and stashing them in not-quite-black sites in Texas or Florida until they can book them on a private airplane to Guatemala.

If things get worse we’ll need to wear body cams live-streaming to the cloud at all times to ensure our rights are upheld. Now that I think about it - not a bad product idea!

> I think the better path forward is more open, peaceful, extended discussion.

There is a good format for two people to have a discussion in good faith: https://yesnodebate.org/

I'll start - Do you think it is good that federal agents are ignoring due process?

No, your favored extremists taking control of the government, attacking American cities, and executing Americans who protest is not "squashing a rebellion". These are straight up violations of individual liberty and rejection of limited government, as laid out by the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.

The framing of your injustices is specious - while I'd normally be right with you about the synergy of corporate power forming a de-facto government, that these became mainstream political issues really just demonstrates how far your bubble has been warped by propagandists. Do you know how you can look at the blue tribe media and easily pick out the inflammatory extremist wackos? Your tribe has that also. If you are unable to see it, this means you are saturated in it.

I'm focused on the initial paragraph more than anything else.

OP's lead sentence is race-baiting, bubble-coded hyperbolic misinformation, and the entire first paragraph is completely unnecessary and uncharacteristic of appropriate HN content. We know how to have better discussions here. Starting with primary source and not editorialized re-posts is one of them.

Also, "non-white" is not really a "specific ethnic group" imo; and the article does not lead with "much more likely to suffer consequences" but rather "DHS want to find non-white people to deport by any means necessary" which is a gross mischaracterization of the stated intention of actual government officials. If you have direct evidence to the contrary lmk