Flock Exposed - ICE and Border Patrol Access

Flock has repeatedly told the public and the press that it does not work with federal immigration enforcement. Documented reporting tells a different story: immigration agents have reached into local camera data again and again, sometimes through a company-run pilot program, sometimes through a "back door" in the national network, and sometimes just by asking a local officer to run the search on their behalf.

Flock's CEO said there were no federal contracts. Then Flock admitted there were.

In July 2025, Flock told a Colorado news outlet that federal agencies no longer had access to its license plate readers, "which we took at face value," according to one customer's later account of the exchange. Flock's own CEO, Garrett Langley, reiterated this in a live interview that same month, stating flatly that Flock "had no Federal contracts." By August 2025, Langley was forced to walk that back, acknowledging in a statement that "while it is true that Flock does not presently have a contractual relationship with any U.S. Department of Homeland Security agencies, we have engaged in limited pilots with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Homeland Security Investigations," describing the work as combatting human trafficking and fentanyl distribution. Flock's official public messaging still states it has no ICE contract and that federal agencies were removed from its national search network in August 2025 - a claim that came only after reporters had already found otherwise.

Source: 9News, "Flock admits federal immigration agents have direct access to tracking data, despite previous claims"; Indivisible Dallas, "Surveillance Technology in Dallas" (quoting Langley's August 2025 statement); Daily Californian, "Berkeley street camera company pauses pilot program amid data sharing concerns"; Flock Safety, "Does Flock Share Data With ICE? Here's Flock's Answer"

Border Patrol had a pilot agreement covering the entire nationwide database - and didn't tell the cities involved

In May 2025, without notifying the individual cities whose data was involved, Flock signed a pilot agreement with U.S. Border Patrol that granted the agency access to Flock's entire nationwide National Lookup database, according to a memo from Berkeley's city manager reviewed by KQED. The arrangement let Border Patrol search across participating jurisdictions' camera data without alerting the affected local governments that it was happening. When Berkeley's own council later scrutinized its Flock contract as a self-declared sanctuary city, an internal Berkeley Police Department audit found three separate instances between January and June 2025 in which outside police agencies had run immigration-related searches in the city's Flock database - one search logged simply as "ICE" and two logged as "CBP."

Source: KQED, "Berkeley Extends Surveillance Contract With Flock Safety but Rejects Major Expansion"; SF Standard, "Berkeley — the first U.S. sanctuary city — reconsiders surveillance expansion with Flock"; Berkeley Speaks, "Stop Local Collaboration with Immigration"

404 Media: more than 4,000 lookups run for the federal government, and functionally no real "back door" distinction

404 Media reviewed data showing more than 4,000 nationwide and statewide lookups performed by local and state police at the request of the federal government for immigration purposes, obtained from researchers who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retaliation. When CBP was found to have accessed ALPR data through a previously undisclosed pilot program that customers had not agreed to share with federal authorities, 404 Media reported that "functionally, there is no difference between Flock's 'nationwide network' and the network of cameras that CBP has access to" - meaning CBP had effectively been granted back-door access to the whole system, including data from police departments as far away as Washington state. Separate 404 Media reporting found that ICE, the Secret Service, and even the Navy have all had access to Flock's nationwide camera network at various points.

Source: 404 Media, "ICE Taps into Nationwide AI-Enabled Camera Network, Data Shows"; University of Washington Center for Human Rights, "Leaving the Door Wide Open," 2025 (quoting 404 Media); 404 Media, "ICE, Secret Service, Navy All Had Access to Flock's Nationwide Network of Cameras"

A named case: Flock searches helped federal agents track down an alleged gang figure in Nebraska - and raised the same question everywhere else

When federal immigration agents arrested Melvin Varela Perez in the Omaha area on July 9, 2025, officials publicly credited Flock searches with helping U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations unit locate him. Douglas County Sheriff Aaron Hanson defended the tool's use, saying "we have to use technology to our advantage, because the criminals are using technology to their advantage already," and his office said its Flock searches are always tied to criminal cases rather than run solely for civil immigration violations. Whatever one concludes about that specific case, it illustrates the underlying mechanism documented in Virginia as well, where increased federal immigration enforcement activity coincided with local ALPR searches - Virginia's own network was queried thousands of times in connection with immigration cases during a period when enforcement led to nearly 4,300 arrests in the state.

Source: Flatwater Free Press / Nebraska Public Media, "License plate readers in Nebraska help ICE conduct immigration enforcement efforts"; North Platte Telegraph, same report (Sheriff Hanson quote); Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism / VPM, "Virginia surveillance network tapped thousands of times for immigration cases"

Sanctuary cities discovered the same pattern - and some are fighting back

Berkeley, California, the first sanctuary city in the United States, found itself confronting exactly this problem: city council members who had promised residents that local police would not assist federal immigration enforcement discovered their own Flock contract had been quietly used for immigration-related searches by outside agencies, and that Flock itself had misrepresented its federal relationships. A California state law dating back a decade already prohibits local jurisdictions from sharing ALPR data with out-of-state or federal agencies, which is part of why the CBP pilot access was treated as such a serious breach of trust once uncovered. Community advocacy groups in Berkeley have pushed the city to drop its Flock contract entirely, arguing that no amount of after-the-fact compliance tooling changes the fact that the access happened first and the explanations came only once it was caught.

Source: Daily Californian, "Berkeley street camera company pauses pilot program amid data sharing concerns"; Berkeley Speaks, "Stop Local Collaboration with Immigration"; Street Spirit, "Flock camera surveillance has eyes all over Berkeley, but at what cost?"

Washington State: at least eight agencies sharing directly with Border Patrol, some without their own city's knowledge

At least eight local law enforcement agencies in Washington State shared Flock license plate data directly with U.S. Border Patrol during 2025, and in some cases the cities that owned the cameras were not even aware the sharing was happening. The exposure led the state legislature to pass the Driver Privacy Act (SB 6002), which passed the Senate 40 to 9, requiring warrants for most ALPR data sharing with federal agencies, limiting retention to 21 days, and barring cameras near schools and churches.

Source: State of Surveillance, "Washington Driver Privacy Act Could Ban Flock Data Sharing With ICE"; University of Washington Center for Human Rights, "Leaving the Door Wide Open."

San Francisco: 1.6 million queries by federal agencies in seven months

A class action lawsuit filed in San Francisco Superior Court in February 2026 alleges that out-of-state and federal agencies, including ICE, CBP, the FBI, and the ATF, queried the San Francisco Police Department's Flock cameras more than 1.6 million times in seven months. Plaintiffs are seeking $2,500 per violation under California's Civil Code, an exposure that could run into the billions of dollars given the scale of the queries.

Source: State of Surveillance, "Flock Safety's Private Surveillance State: 80 Cities Are Pulling Out"; The Gateway Pundit.

Richmond, Virginia: an ATF analyst used local cameras to aid an immigration investigation

A Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives analyst improperly accessed Richmond, Virginia's Flock license plate reader system to aid an immigration investigation after individuals escaped an ICE detention center - a federal agency reaching into a local system for a purpose it was never authorized for.

Source: VPM News, cited in Immigration Policy Tracking Project.

Bend, Oregon: 279 federal immigration queries in the first three weeks alone

Federal immigration officials made 279 queries into Bend, Oregon's Flock Safety data in just the first three weeks after gaining access, including 118 queries by CBP during a single three-week window in June 2025 and 161 additional instances of out-of-state agencies searching on behalf of ICE, CBP, and Homeland Security Investigations - many of those requesting departments based in southern states.

Source: The Source, "Federal Immigration Officials Made 279 Queries into Bend's Flock Safety Data in its First Three Weeks."

Minnesota's Twin Cities: searches that didn't fit the state's own legal definition

Police in the Twin Cities searched Flock license plate cameras for immigration enforcement purposes during an ICE surge, even though Minnesota law only permits sharing that data to assist an active criminal investigation. A Hopkins police captain put it plainly: "It's a criminal investigative tool, not a civil enforcement mechanism... If people are misusing the data, they should be held accountable." The exposure led Brooklyn Park and Columbia Heights to end their Flock contracts entirely.

Source: Star Tribune, "Police searched Twin Cities license plate cameras for immigration enforcement during ICE surge."

The bottom line: Flock has said publicly, more than once, that federal immigration agencies do not have access to its system - and each time, subsequent reporting or an agency's own internal audit found otherwise. A town's decision to keep its camera data out of federal immigration enforcement is not fully in that town's hands once its data joins Flock's national network.

This page will be updated as more factual sources become available.