Internal documents show DHS agents are now relying heavily on biometric surveillance — facial recognition, interconnected databases — as central tools in immigration enforcement. The systems are sweeping up US citizens alongside their intended targets.

The infrastructure itself is not new. It was built incrementally across multiple administrations, each adding capabilities. What changed is the scale and context of deployment. Systems designed for border security are being used in domestic enforcement operations in American cities.

The timing matters: this expansion is happening as Congress formally defunds the DHS Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and zeros out the Immigration Detention Ombudsman. The surveillance apparatus grows while the oversight apparatus shrinks. These are not unrelated developments.

When you build a system with broad capabilities and then remove the checks on how it is used, the system will be used broadly. That is not a prediction about intent. It is a description of how institutional incentives work.