Police departments across the United States are using school district security cameras to assist Donald Trump's mass immigration enforcement campaign, according to an investigation by the 74. Audit logs from Texas school districts that contract with Flock Safety, an Atlanta-based company, show thousands of searches conducted by law enforcement for immigration-related purposes.
The cameras, which record license plate numbers and other identifying details, are part of a national database accessible to police agencies. Over a one-month period, more than 733,000 searches were conducted on cameras at the Alvin independent school district alone, with immigration-related reasons cited 620 times by 30 law enforcement agencies from states including Florida, Georgia, Indiana and Tennessee.
Educators, parents and students as young as five have been affected by the Trump administration's immigration crackdown, with immigrant families targeted during school drop-offs and pick-ups. The data raises questions about whether campus surveillance technology intended for student safety is being repurposed for immigration enforcement.
Phil Neff, research coordinator at the University of Washington Center for Human Rights, said the findings underscore how far-reaching these systems can be. Grants of access to border patrol have been documented, such as at the Huffman independent school district, where the campus police chief's administrative assistant enabled access to license plate readers in May.
There is no evidence that school districts themselves use the devices for immigration-related purposes or are aware that other agencies do so. Flock offers standardised reasons for searches, including “Immigration (civil/administrative)” and “Immigration (criminal)”. The investigation highlights the scale of digital surveillance at school districts nationwide.
