Border Patrol, ICE tapped into Washington police surveillance systems for potential immigration enforcement

Federal law enforcement agencies accessed data collected by some local police and sheriff’s offices automated license plate cameras around Washington, a University of Washington Center for Human Rights report found, sometimes without local agencies’ knowledge.

U.S. Border Patrol had access to data from surveillance networks in at least 18 local law enforcement agencies in Washington in varying degrees, the report found, which may have been used for immigration enforcement.

Increasingly popular Flock Safety automated license plate readers capture real-time documentation of license plate numbers and vehicle descriptions. This data is stored in a network managed by local law enforcement agencies in their respective jurisdictions.

There are more than 80,000 Flock cameras in 49 states, according to the report, including 60-70 in Spokane County, according to Sheriff John Nowels.

Spokane police does not use Flock cameras, according to department spokesman Officer Dan Strassenberg.

Local law enforcement can choose how available their networks are to other Flock users, ranging from direct access on a nationwide scale, to picking which agencies see their data, to only keeping data for their own agency.

Border Patrol directly consulted the networks in eight Washington law enforcement agencies this year, the report finds, for reasons including “immigration,” according to records obtained by UW researchers.

In 10 cases where Flock users do not permit Border Patrol access to their Flock networks, the report found they searched through them anyway, according to periodic audits produced by Flock and obtained by researchers. Researchers are not sure how, said Phil Neff, research coordinator on the report.

“The most likely explanation we’ve heard is that there’s a Flock feature called national lookup, which is just a single checkbox that they can enable,” Neff said. “If you have that enabled, then any other law enforcement agency across the country can search your network and vice versa.”

Nowels said Spokane County’s Flock system is not accessible to any federal or out-of-state law enforcement agencies. The sheriff’s office does share data with police from Spokane, Airway Heights and Liberty Lake for their enforcement.

Nowels said he ensured the office’s Flock data was “locked down” in May after a widely reported instance of Texas law enforcement searching nationwide for a woman who had an abortion. Their search included combing through Flock databases around the country for sightings of her vehicle and license plate number, including in Yakima and Prosser.

Though agencies like the U.S. Border Patrol or Immigrations and Customs Enforcement do not have immediate, comprehensive access to the sheriff’s office Flock database, Nowels said if any federal agency asked for information pursuant to a criminal investigation, his office would provide it. As far as Nowels knows, that has not happened yet.

“If in fact we have provided anything to federal law enforcement offices it would be because of a criminal investigation,” he said.

In at least three cases in the Seattle area, police were not aware their Flock networks were accessible to federal law enforcement until UW researchers notified them. Police in Renton and Auburn, Washington, each adjusted their Flock settings intending to bar federal access after learning they “unintentionally” made information available in the national lookup feature.

“While Flock’s national network allows agencies across the country to share information, Auburn has not intentionally or knowingly granted access to any agency directly affiliated with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or engaged in immigration enforcement activities,” the Auburn Police Department wrote in a news release.

Lakewood police also adjusted their settings, according to the Seattle Times.

The findings raised concerns with researchers that federal agencies’ access to local law enforcement’s data may run afoul of the 2019 Keep Washington Working Act, which prevents local law enforcement from cooperating with federal agencies’ civil immigration enforcement efforts. The report also identifies potential loopholes in the intent of the law, Neff said.

“It really underscores a big area of vulnerability for Keep Washington Working,” Neff said. “Because the sharing of networks with out-of-state law enforcement that might do searches on behalf of ICE, or the sharing of networks directly with federal immigration enforcement authority agencies isn’t necessarily prohibited by Keep Washington Working.”