Many law enforcement agencies across the nation, including in Texas, use networks of cameras to automatically track cars — and some are using them to support federal immigration enforcement.
That’s the topline from data recently obtained through a public records request first reported by 404 Media that The Barbed Wire has independently reviewed.
Earlier this week, the independent online outlet reported that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement has tapped into a nationwide AI-enabled camera network with the help of local law enforcement agencies. Their findings are based on data obtained by activists via a public records request to an Illinois Police Department for search logs from police departments around the country that have contracts with Flock, a surveillance company that provides automatic license plate reader technology to government agencies. ICE does not have a contract with Flock, which 404 Media noted as an indication that the federal department is using local agencies as side-door access to the tool.
The data reveals that several law enforcement agencies in Texas have conducted searches of the Flock camera network for immigration-related purposes — underscoring the pervasive spread of mass surveillance technology and how local law enforcement agencies are quietly using it to support deportation efforts.
Another recent story from 404 Media punctuates the point and demonstrates that it’s not just a matter of immigration. The outlet reported that a sheriff in Johnson County ran a Flock search for a woman who they said self-administered an abortion, citing concerns from her family about her safety. Last summer, Attorney General Ken Paxton asked a judge to strike down a rule that protects the privacy of pregnant people who travel across state lines to get abortions. Several Texas counties also have tried to ban travel out of state for abortion, which is illegal in Texas. If such bans become law, there’s little to stop law enforcement agencies from using license plate readers to track and charge abortion seekers.
There’s a lot to unpack here, so let’s break it down.
What are automatic license plate readers?
Automatic license plate readers are systems that use networks of cameras to automatically capture information from passing vehicles and store it in a searchable database for 30 days. Thousands of local and state government agencies across the country, including law enforcement, have contracts with companies that offer the technology, such as Flock. These tools are marketed primarily for combatting crime.
Most of the companies that offer this sort of technology allow for their government customers to opt in to sharing data from their camera networks. However, privacy advocates argue the indiscriminate surveillance that license plate readers facilitate violates constitutional rights to privacy.
Where did the data come from?
Law enforcement agencies with Flock contracts are able to search their own cameras, and also any other camera networks across the nation operated by agencies that opt in to share their data. A Flock user guide says that users can run national searches, and also “run a Network Audit to see who has searched your network from any agency in the Flock system.”
The data that 404 Media first reported on was obtained by activist researchers via a public records request for the Danville, Illinois police department’s Flock Network Audit. The activists have requested to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal. Because Flock allows police departments to share their cameras’ records to other agencies, the audit shows whenever Danville’s camera records were searched by police departments, including Texas law enforcement agencies.
However, it is an incomplete record of how Texas law enforcement agencies are using Flock, meaning that there could be more immigration related searches from agencies using Flock that did not include the Danville camera network.
What does the data say Texas law enforcement agencies are doing?
The Danville Flock Network Audit contains immigration related searches from Texas law enforcement agencies as far back as June 2024, including a total of 307 immigration related searches. Each search has a “reason” field, and all of the 307 searches related to immigration feature keywords in the reason field such as “immigration,” “ICE,” or “DHS.”
That data shows that at least five Texas law enforcement agencies have conducted at least 180 immigration related searches using Flock since January. The Texas law enforcement agencies that conducted immigration related searches in the Flock database and the number of searches they ran in 2025 are as follows: Dallas Police Department, 17; Houston Police Department, 109, Midland Police Department, 2; Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office, 2; and the Texas Department of Public Safety, 50.
Prior to January 2025, the majority of those searches were related to Homeland Security Investigations, the primary investigative unit of the Department of Homeland Security. HSI has a broad criminal investigative mandate beyond immigration enforcement, meaning that such searches were likely not using Flock specifically for immigration enforcement. The Galveston County Sheriff’s Office only ran one Flock search in 2024 related to an HSI investigation. Out of the total of 91 searches from Texas law enforcement agencies in 2024, nearly 70% were for HSI related reasons.
Under the second Trump administration, that’s apparently changed. Since January, the majority of Texas law enforcement Flock database searches are for immigration related reasons. Out of 216 total lookups Texas law enforcement agencies made in 2025, more than 83% of them were listed for immigration related reasons such as “immigration,” “immigration enforcement,” “immigration status,” and “ICE+ERO” (ERO stands for Enforcement and Removal Operations, the arm of DHS responsible for immigration enforcement). With the exception of three Customs and Border Protection related searches, the remaining 17% of searches were related to HSI.
The data does not show exactly what information the searches turned up, or whether they resulted in or informed any actions by ICE. Some law enforcement agencies told 404 Media they are not engaging in immigration enforcement, despite the reason for the Flock lookup saying “immigration.” But that sort of denial is not an option for some of the agencies in Texas, whose reasons for the searches seem clear enough.
The Dallas Police Department made 17 Flock searches in 2025 with the reason “ICE+ERO” and one in 2024 with the reason “ICE+Suspect.” All of the Flock search requests the Texas Department of Public Safety made in 2025 were for “ICE Operation,” “ICE Support,” “Immigration Status,” “illegal immigration,” or simply “ICE.” Out of the 109 Flock search requests the Houston Police Department made in 2025, three list “immigration enforcement” as the reason, while the remainder simply list “immigration.” The Midland Police Department and the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office both made two searches with the reason “immigration.”
How have Texas law enforcement responded to the reporting?
Dallas recently expanded the number of Flock cameras in city limits. When reached for comment regarding 404 Media’s reporting and the data showing that the department searched the Flock database for “ICE+ERO,” a spokesperson told The Barbed Wire “It is not our practice to comment on other outlets’ reporting.” They did not respond to follow up questions.
After The Barbed Wire sent a follow up email asking if the Dallas Police Department would confirm or deny their use of Flock in cooperation with ICE immigration enforcement, the spokesperson wrote: “Per General Order 315.04, the Dallas Police Department does not enforce immigration laws.” No further explanation regarding the “ICE+ERO” searches in Flock was provided.
A Houston Police public information officer confirmed that the department has a contract with Flock, but would not comment on the data showing the agency conducted lookups in the Flock database for “immigration” and “immigration enforcement” reasons, and directed The Barbed Wire to file a public information request.
The Midland Police Department, the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office, and the Texas Department of Public Safety did not respond to requests for comment from The Barbed Wire.
Why does it matter?
The Flock database lookups are typically done without a warrant or court order, a practice that an ongoing federal lawsuit filed by the Institute for Justice argues is unconstitutional and violates the Fourth Amendment.
The rise of privately run surveillance camera networks like Flock, and the data sharing practices they facilitate between law enforcement agencies, has raised concerns among lawmakers regarding lack of oversight.
Last year, the state of Texas sent Flock a cease and desist letter for operating “as a private security business without a license,” according to the Houston Chronicle. But within a matter of months, Flock had received authorization to continue working in Houston.
“We have serious concerns about the use of ALPR technology across Texas,” said Savannah Kumar, an attorney with the ACLU of Texas. “The severe lack of transparency and oversight has always been at the root of automatic license plate readers, along with the inherent ability for the government to discriminatorily target certain communities for intense surveillance, and so we’re seeing that manifest in even more troubled ways and learning about the ways that this information is being shared with the federal government with ICE.”
The dragnet surveillance that systems like Flock enable has raised constitutional concerns. The aforementioned federal lawsuit filed in Virginia argues that Flock’s license plate reader technology, which is used by the city of Norfolk, violates the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures because the cameras indiscriminately record every vehicle that passes by and store that information for thirty days without a warrant.
Immigration advocates have also raised alarms about ICE gaining access to automated license plate reader networks.
Earlier this year, reporting in The Guardian revealed that Westchester county police shared data from an automated license plate camera system called Rekor with ICE, effectively undermining the county’s sanctuary city laws. Rekor is one of the smaller vendors in the automated license plate reader space; Flock is one of the largest.
Although the Texas legislature passed a bill in 2017 that banned such sanctuary city laws, there have been attempts to resist the state’s approach to immigration enforcement in places like Austin. The legislature recently passed a bill mandating that sheriffs in cities with populations of at least 100,000 collaborate with ICE to enforce federal immigration laws, effectively tying their hands and meaning ICE will have increasing access to local surveillance tools that do not require warrants to use.
“The threat of license plate readers is that they are going to be accessed by ICE in jurisdictions where ICE is not going to get access to other kinds of things,” said Dave Maass, director of investigations at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit digital rights advocacy group. “Crime is not a universal definition accepted by every jurisdiction and state. In some states, they might protect undocumented people. In other places, they’re actively requiring police to go after undocumented people. The people in Danville may not know that their data is being searched by people in Texas.”