United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) plans to begin collecting photographs of everyone leaving the US for Mexico or Canada by car, Wired reports.

The photographs will then be matched to the images in the passengers’ passports, visas, or travel documents.

Jessica Turner, a CBP spokesperson, didn’t provide a timeline for when these plans will be implemented—only that the agency “will ultimately expand to this area” and that it is “still working on how we would handle outbound vehicle lanes.”

Turner didn’t explicitly say that the new face-scanning initiative was intended to track self-deportation by illegal aliens, amid mammoth Trump administration efforts to encourage this, but they didn’t rule it out either.

“Not to say it won’t happen in the future, though, with the way self-deportation is going,” they told Wired.

The spokesperson didn’t specify if the photographs of passengers would be combined with other data, for example, fingerprints captured elsewhere, but did say the photos would be used to verify later crossings into America.

But the news does come as it seems that border control is leaning on how it can use technology to close loopholes in terms of illegal immigration control. Wired reported earlier this week that United States Customs and Border Protection is soliciting pitches from tech firms about how to implement a real-time facial recognition tool that could automatically take photos of everyone in a vehicle, including those in the backseat, matching them to their official documents.

The CBP said it is currently using a comparable facial recognition tool across America’s air, sea, and pedestrian entrances, but wants to bring this type of tech to “a land-vehicle environment.”

Meanwhile, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) recently signed a $29.9 million deal with data analytics giant Palantir to create a new system called ICE Immigration Lifecycle Operating System, or ImmigrationOS, to assist in “targeting and enforcement prioritization.” For example, arresting migrants who overstay their visas or members of criminal gangs.

Though this is the first time reports have surfaced of US authorities looking to collect the facial data of people leaving the country, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen privacy issues emerge when it comes to exiting the country.

In 2024, Vermont police reported a wave of incidents where US citizens found AirTags in vehicles after driving into the US from Canada, with the aim of later tracking and stealing the vehicles.

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About Will McCurdy

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I’m a reporter covering weekend news. Before joining PCMag in 2024, I picked up bylines in BBC News, The Guardian, The Times of London, The Daily Beast, Vice, Slate, Fast Company, The Evening Standard, The i, TechRadar, and Decrypt Media.

I’ve been a PC gamer since you had to install games from multiple CD-ROMs by hand. As a reporter, I’m passionate about the intersection of tech and human lives. I’ve covered everything from crypto scandals to the art world, as well as conspiracy theories, UK politics, and Russia and foreign affairs.

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