Face recognition technology may sound futuristic, or perhaps too abstract to seem harmful. But we are already living in a reality in which face recognition and other forms of biometric surveillance pervade our daily lives. These technologies threaten our privacy and free speech rights and, when used by police and immigration enforcement, serve as yet another dangerous system to abuse Black and Brown people on a massive scale. Big Tech companies are profiting off these abuses because they are the ones developing and selling face recognition to government agencies. And it’s our communities — particularly communities of color — that face the harmful consequences.

The good news is that there is a national movement against face recognition that is gaining momentum every day. Recently, a coalition of grassroots organizations from across the country called on Congress to take immediate action to stop government use of dangerous face recognition. Here in Washington state, a place where companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Palantir loom large, we know firsthand how tech companies collaborate with immigration and law enforcement agencies to build large-scale surveillance tools that facilitate and fuel racist systems that harm both immigrants and U.S. citizens.

Face recognition technology is racist, from how it was built to how it is used. It’s been used by police departments to wrongfully arrest Black men, by ICE and CBP to target and track immigrant families, and by the FBI to surveil Black Lives Matter demonstrators exercising their First Amendment rights. Face recognition massively expands the government’s power to track our movements and target people based on their race, religion, political affiliation, or speech — and while everyone’s rights are at stake, Black and Brown people are harmed the most when this racist technology collides with our racist systems.

Our law and immigration enforcement systems are rooted in this country’s racist history, including slavery, and were created to uphold white supremacy. This is why it’s often those who sit at the margins — folks of color, immigrants, the poor, disabled, women, and trans or gender nonconforming people — who face systemic violence and brutality. Face recognition technology, which was created by those with the most power in society, will only exacerbate this legacy and pattern of state-sanctioned violence against our communities. We’re already seeing this dynamic at work.

In Detroit, police use of face recognition led to the wrongful arrest of Robert Williams, a Black man who was arrested at his home in front of his family. Face recognition’s proven track record of inaccuracy when used against people of color makes us even more likely to be targeted, arrested, or detained. But even if this technology was perfectly accurate, it would still harm communities of color by facilitating systems that are already racist.

The Department of Homeland Security and its sub-agencies ICE and CBP have already committed horrific abuses. With face recognition, they could potentially pinpoint the location of immigrants across the country, marking them for detention and deportation on an unprecedented scale. In 2017, for example, DHS, ICE, and the Department of Health and Human Services used technology supplied by Palantir to tag, track, locate, and arrest 400 people in an operation that targeted the family members and caregivers of unaccompanied migrant children. Face recognition would only expand the power of agencies like ICE to target and tear apart communities of color throughout the country.

Congress is starting to respond. Last week, Sens. Edward Markey and Jeff Merkley and Reps. Pramila Jayapal and Ayanna Pressley reintroduced the Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act, an important bill that responds to the imminent threat of this dangerous surveillance technology. This bill comes as grassroots-powered coalitions continue to pass bans on face recognition across the country. King County, Wash. became the latest jurisdiction to ban face recognition after a unanimous vote by its county council. Big Tech companies — most recently Amazon — have also been forced to make commitments to stop selling face recognition to law enforcement. These wins are not an accident; they are the result of years of local organizing and activism from the communities most impacted.

There’s no doubt these victories are important, but any moratorium is still a temporary solution. Our communities have been clear: We want new systems to keep us safe — systems not rooted in slavery and racism. We need Congress to not only stop face recognition technology, but permanently divest from our racist punishment systems and reinvest in our communities. Until the federal government takes action, our communities will remain in danger.

Big Tech companies like Microsoft are already lobbying for weak regulations that protect their corporate interests and effectively greenlight these dangerous systems. In addition to stopping government acquisition, use, and funding of face recognition technology for state and local face surveillance, the federal government must support local grassroots-powered progress by rejecting Big Tech efforts to preempt state and local bans and moratoria. We can’t let Big Tech stamp out our hard-won advancements.

We are at a critical moment. The fight against face recognition comes alongside a nationwide reckoning with racism and policing led by the Black Lives Matter movement. We must take this opportunity to recognize the role of surveillance in exacerbating the inherent racism of our law and immigration enforcement systems. We must stop face and other biometric surveillance and confront these systemic harms. Only then will we be on the path to equity and justice.

In the days after his nomination, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas signaled his willingness to make a decisive break from Donald Trump’s racist and anti-immigrant policies. Mayorkas is the first Latino and the first immigrant to lead the Department of Homeland Security, the government agency that is most responsible for delivering the “fair and humane” immigration system President Joe Biden promised as a candidate.

As he approaches the sixth month anniversary of his confirmation, Mayorkas’ progress report is mixed: Despite some notable high marks, the incremental approach Mayorkas has embraced is not doing enough to reverse the drastic restrictions of the Trump administration and to end the ongoing trauma inflicted by America’s inhumane immigration enforcement system.

While there’s been a sharp decrease in ICE arrests, a trend that began before he assumed his position, some ICE agents are flouting the administration’s directives and ICE continues to intimidate immigrants across the country in collaboration with local police.

Mayorkas moved to close two detention sites in Georgia and Massachusetts, but ICE has doubled the number of immigrants and asylum seekers locked up in detention centers under his watch, and kept open dozens of facilities with appalling records of abuse and neglect. And while Mayorkas ended the “return to Mexico” policy implemented under Trump, he has largely continued Trump’s illegal misuse of the Title 42 public health authority to expel people seeking asylum without due process.

Here’s how Secretary Mayorkas’ record in three key areas — reining in ICE abuses, closing ICE detention centers, and taking a fair and humane approach to border policy — matches up with his rhetoric and voters’ mandate to dismantle Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and bring humanity and fairness to our immigration system.

For four years, former President Donald Trump weaponized ICE, brandishing the threat of mass raids and deportations to further a racist agenda and score points with his base. Under Mayorkas’ leadership, ICE’s immigration enforcement practices are changing.

In February, Secretary Mayorkas directed ICE to focus its civil immigration enforcement resources on threats to national security, border security, and public safety. While seriously flawed, the directive went further than the Obama administration’s in limiting deportations, and evidence suggests that it has made a real impact on the ground. DHS has also moved to limit enforcement actions at courthouses and vaccine distribution centers, while working to find solutions for survivors of crime and deported veterans. And in May, a memo to ICE attorneys relayed new guidance on which groups to prioritize for civil enforcement and arrests.

However, Mayorkas has repeatedly declined to rein in ICE agents in other ways. He rolled back the Biden administration’s initial move to largely prohibit agents from conducting street arrests, which have involved “snatch and grab” operations, where agents in plain clothes force people off the street into unmarked cars, and agents masquerading as local police — in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

Agents are now justifying arrests by categorizing people as “priorities” even though they do not meet the criteria set out in the May memo, resulting in thousands of people wrongly deported.

Mayorkas’ DHS has also not done enough to reduce ICE’s tentacular reach into communities across the country. Since the early 2000s, ICE has tapped state and local police, sheriffs, and corrections officials to participate in arrests and deportations through the 287(g) program, Secure Communities program, and ICE detainers. These programs have emboldened local police to engage in racial profiling, incentivizing pretextual arrests made on state or local criminal grounds — with the actual goal of identifying immigrants to detain for ICE.

The Trump administration used these programs to intimidate immigrant communities and drive a wedge between them and local law enforcement. The 287(g) program expanded to an additional 116 partner agreements with local law enforcement under Trump. Despite promises President Biden made on the campaign trail, DHS has only ended one 287(g) agreement, and has left in place Trump-era changes making these partnerships last indefinitely instead of three years.

Secretary Mayorkas has the power to end the 287(g) program, fundamentally reform ICE, and decouple its work from local policing.

Mayorkas oversees more than 200 ICE detention facilities scattered across the country, including many with documented patterns of inhumane treatment and conditions.

In May, DHS announced the closure of two sites: Bristol County House of Corrections in Massachusetts and Irwin County Detention Center in Georgia, the site of horrific allegations of abuse, including the use of tear gas against detained people seeking safety from COVID-19, forced hysterectomies, and systemic medical neglect. In July, ICE announced a policy against detaining and arresting pregnant, postpartum, and nursing individuals — a shift long sought by the ACLU and other advocates.

These were positive steps, but Mayorkas failed to seize the opportunity to shrink the ICE detention machine. In February, after Mayorkas was sworn in, ICE held approximately 13,500 people in detention each day — compared to a high of 56,000 people per day under the Trump administration. Instead of taking the opportunity to close detention sites — saving millions in taxpayer dollars — and expand the use of community-based alternatives to detention, ICE in recent months has doubled the average daily population of detention facilities. As of July, DHS reports an average daily detained population of 26,200 people.

The Trump administration signed unusually wasteful contracts that expanded the use of private prison companies and opened detention centers in facilities with lengthy histories of abuse. The ACLU called on Mayorkas to shut down these and other facilities, identifying 39 detention sites with inhumane and life-threatening conditions and extremely limited access to legal counsel. Yet the administration has only closed two, and asked Congress to fund 30,000 detention beds in the coming year.

While the Biden administration moved to end the Justice Department’s contracts with private prisons operating criminal detention sites, it has not extended that to immigration. Immigrants and people seeking asylum continue to languish in privately operated prisons that are incentivized to keep conditions poor and even unsafe to maximize their profits.

Perhaps most galling, as detention sites close, ICE is choosing to transfer people to other detention facilities rather than release them to their communities and families — undermining hard-won progress and jeopardizing the health of detained people, as well as their ability to effectively present their cases.

Mayorkas still has an opportunity to bring lasting change to this system. He should recommit to closing ICE detention sites that fail to ensure the health and safety of detained people, and make a new commitment to review and close detention sites where people do not have meaningful access to counsel. Moreover, as detention sites close, he should require that ICE prioritize the release of detained people — rather than their continued detention elsewhere.

The Biden administration rescinded the “zero tolerance” policy devised by the Trump administration, correctly understanding that its function served as a horrific tool for separating families at the border. Mayorkas is leading a task force to reunite separated parents with their children. Recently, a small number of families were reunited. The process has been slow-moving and serious trauma lingers. Mayorkas’ task force should focus not only on reuniting these families, but on ensuring that they have legal status, access to social services, and other resources that they need in order to recover.

In February, Mayorkas announced that he would rebuild the asylum process, which is supposed to offer people who flee persecution in their home countries a fair opportunity to seek protection and safety in the U.S., but which the prior administration attempted to dismantle. He has made some progress toward this goal, such as formally ending Trump’s “return to Mexico” policy. But he has largely kept in place the Trump administration’s Title 42 order, which effectively closes the borders to people seeking safety in the U.S., purportedly because of the pandemic. Under Title 42, people seeking asylum are being returned to Mexico or their countries of origin, where many face persecution and violence. Title 42 imposes particular harms on Black migrants, This policy is not only inhumane, it is illegal. Public health experts have made clear that Title 42 has no scientific basis as a public health measure; even under Trump, experts at the CDC were opposed to issuing the order in the first place. It is long past time for the Biden administration to end the Title 42 order and restore people’s ability to seek protection from persecution in the United States, as U.S. and international law require.

Mayorkas and the Biden administration have a mandate from voters to reform an immigration system that has been weaponized, politicized and made increasingly punitive. We will continue urging Mayorkas to prioritize major reforms to undo the harm the Trump administration caused to families and communities, and to make substantial progress toward rebuilding the asylum process and reining in abuses by ICE and its agents.

More than one year after the brutal murder of George Floyd at the hands of police, it is clear that international accountability is critical to complement and bolster domestic efforts to dismantle systemic racism in law enforcement in the United States.

Last month, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet released a highly anticipated and historic report detailing the “compounding inequalities” and “stark socioeconomic and political marginalization” that Black people and people of African descent in many countries, including in the U.S., continue to face. The report found that “no State has comprehensively accounted for the past or for the current impact of systemic racism” and called for a “transformative agenda” to uproot systemic racism and address law enforcement violence against Black people and people of African descent.

The report, which references the U.S. more than any other country, calls for “reimagining policing and reforming criminal justice systems that do not keep racial and ethnic minorities safe and which have consistently produced discriminatory outcomes for Africans and people of African descent” and urges states to address racial profiling in law enforcement, the militarization of law enforcement, and the lack of accountability and transparency regarding police violence.

Building on the momentum of the report, Bachelet formally presented her report and agenda for transformative change to the U.N. Human Rights Council last week. There is, she said, “an urgent need to confront the legacies of enslavement, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, colonialism, and successive racially discriminatory policies and systems, and to seek reparatory justice.”

Advocates immediately recognized the groundbreaking nature of this report and the impact it could have — if the U.S. actively responds. In a video statement on behalf of the ACLU, Collette Flannigan, executive director of Mothers Against Police Brutality, commended the U.N. High Commissioner for “listening to the voices of families of victims of police violence and centering the lived painful experiences of people of African descent more broadly” and called on the Biden administration, Congress, and state and local governments to heed the report’s recommendations.

U.N. member states, led by the Africa Group, also saw the need to capitalize on this moment. In a landmark resolution adopted by consensus the Human Rights Council, the U.N. will create an independent expert mechanism to focus on examining and combating systemic racism worldwide, especially in the context of law enforcement.

Up to the last minute, former colonial powers such as the United Kingdom pushed for a weaker resolution, but an unprecedented international coalition of civil society organizations and NGOs — many of which are led by Black women — successfully urged the council to maintain the core elements of the resolution. The pillars of the resolution call for enhanced global accountability for human rights violations by law enforcement against Black people in the U.S. and globally, and an investigation into the impacts of slavery and colonialism on contemporary forms of systemic racism. This is monumental step toward international accountability for systemic racism in law enforcement.

Following the adoption of the resolution, Secretary of State Antony Blinken released a statement pledging the Biden administration’s cooperation with the new expert mechanism, as the ACLU and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights have been demanding.

For years, the ACLU and civil society organizations have urged administrations to extend similar invitations to thematic human rights experts. In 2019, the ACLU, the National Council of Churches, and a diverse civil society coalition called on the Trump administration to extend an invitation to the U.N. Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism. The ACLU also led a coalition effort which called on the Obama administration to invite the U.N. Special Rapporteur on torture to visit U.S. detention facilities and prisons, including Guantanamo Bay.

The Biden administration’s invitation to U.N. independent experts signifies a new chapter of U.S. engagement with its international human rights bodies, particularly on racial justice and equality. We are encouraged by the administration’s promise to cooperate with the new international probe on systemic racism, but the U.S. government must take further action to confront the impacts of slavery and Jim Crow on systemic racism in the U.S.

Specifically, we’re calling on President Biden and Secretary Blinken to firmly and publicly support:

• The passage of domestic legislation that is strongly aligned with the U.N.’s report, including H.R. 40, to study reparations for slavery;
• The establishment of a National Human Rights Institution and the appointment of a senior Human Rights Coordinator with a mandate to implement a national plan of action to fulfill international human rights obligations, especially on racial justice; and
• Transformative and meaningful changes to our public safety and criminal legal systems, including initiatives to divest from police departments and reinvest in the communities most harmed by police violence and over-policing.

The significant actions taken this week by the highest international human rights body signals a turning point in the struggle against racism and racial discrimination worldwide, and the scourge of systemic racism against Black people, particularly in the context of policing. The implementation of the historic U.N. resolution, which is informally but aptly called the “George Floyd Resolution,” coincides with the 20th anniversary of the Durban Conference Against Racism, which must continue to guide the global fight against racism. The resolution’s implementation should be followed by the creation of a U.N. Permanent Forum on People of African Descent, and work specifically to remedy past and current racial injustices through acknowledgment, recognition, reparations, and guarantees for non-repetition of the crimes against humanity of slavery and the trans-Atlantic trade in enslaved Africans. The onus is now on the Biden administration to lead by example in the work to dismantle systemic racism.