Police departments across the United States are tapping into school district security cameras to support the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement drive, according to an investigation of audit logs.
How the surveillance network operates
Audit logs from six Texas school districts that contract with Atlanta‑based Flock Safety show hundreds of thousands of searches in a national database of automated license‑plate reader data. The system captures license‑plate numbers, timestamps and other identifiers, which are uploaded to a cloud server.
Flock customers, including schools, can choose to share their camera feeds with other police agencies in the company’s nationwide network. Law‑enforcement leaders confirmed that many of these searches were conducted to aid the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in enforcing federal immigration laws.
Scale of the searches
In the Alvin independent school district, which serves about 30,000 students south of Houston, more than 3,100 police agencies performed over 733,000 searches in a single month (December 2025‑January 2026). Of those, 620 searches were tagged as immigration‑related by 30 agencies from states such as Florida, Georgia, Indiana and Tennessee.
Standardized reason codes used by Flock include “Immigration (civil/administrative)” and “Immigration (criminal).” The data highlights the breadth of digital surveillance in schools and raises concerns about repurposing safety technology for immigration enforcement.
What officials say
Phil Neff, research coordinator at the University of Washington Center for Human Rights, warned that the reach of these systems “strains any sense of the appropriate use of this technology.” Ed Vogel of the No Tech Criminalization in Education coalition described the scale as “phenomenal” and difficult for community members to fully grasp.
Legal and policy context
The 287(g) program, which deputizes local officers to perform certain immigration functions, appears in the audit logs of several agencies conducting the most immigration‑related searches. The program has expanded significantly during the current administration.
Flock Safety maintains that it does not give DHS direct access to its cameras; data‑sharing decisions are made by the local customers that own the devices. The company previously ran pilot programs with DHS for human‑trafficking and fentanyl investigations, but those pilots are now paused after legal challenges.
Community response
Students, parents and educators, including children as young as five, have reported being swept up in immigration checks during school drop‑offs and pick‑ups. In Bloomfield, New Jersey, high‑school students staged a walk‑out protest against ICE on 3 February.
Frequently Asked Questions
What technology is being used by the school districts?
School districts have installed Flock Safety’s AI‑powered license‑plate readers, which capture vehicle plate numbers, timestamps and other details and upload them to a cloud‑based database that can be shared with participating law‑enforcement agencies.
How many immigration‑related searches were recorded?
In the Alvin independent school district, 620 searches were identified as immigration‑related out of more than 733,000 total searches conducted by 3,100 police agencies during a one‑month period.
What is the 287(g) program mentioned in the investigation?
The 287(g) program is a federal initiative that allows local law‑enforcement officers to perform certain immigration enforcement duties. Three of the ten agencies with the most immigration‑related searches in the Alvin district logs participate in this program.
How might schools and communities address the tension between safety technology and privacy concerns?
