Progressive Politics

cross-posted from: https://infosec.pub/post/46795143

Videos from a 30 October 2025 operation were disclosed in court as part of an ongoing class-action lawsuit challenging Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) arrest tactics and racial profiling by agents. Lawyers for one of the detained farm workers shared the footage with the Guardian.

The officers did not have warrants to detain the workers, and a federal judge later said the arrests appeared to be unlawful and unjustified.

The footage shows an agent using his phone to capture the face of one of the detained workers, and agents later admitted in court that they used a facial recognition app during the operation. The case provides a window into ICE’s expanding use of this surveillance technology across the US, which has raised significant privacy and civil liberties concerns, particularly since the app can yield inaccurate results.

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US judge Mustafa Kasubhai ruled against ICE in February in the class-action suit led by MJMA. He said officers had engaged in “misconduct” in Oregon and issued a preliminary decision broadly restricting agents in the state from arresting people without warrants.

Kasubhai noted that officers had made inaccurate statements in their reports about the Woodburn encounter, including falsely saying MJMA had entered the US unlawfully when she had arrived with a valid temporary visa. He said the claims of possible “smuggling” were “unfounded”, and noted that ICE’s reports inaccurately called the stop “consensual”.

The judge was also critical of the officers’ use of the facial recognition technology, saying it relied on data that “can be inaccurate and produce individuals who are here in accordance with immigration laws”.

The judge further said that in the Woodburn stop, officers “did not provide any meaningfully reasonable time for the driver to comply with his commands before shattering the driver side window”.