Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have increasingly used government-provided body cameras and facial recognition technologyduring deployments nationwide over the last year as they arrested nearly 400,000 immigrants and violently clashed with protesters.

DHS agents in six states have been seen in the smart glasses since Trump took office, an investigation by The Independent found. In some cases, agents have used the glasses — which have voice-controlled AI for analyzing what the wearer is seeing — to record and photograph members of the public. The glasses are also connected to the internet and can livestream video.

Taken together, these capabilities raise the specter that agents could be using the smart glasses to transmit video and images into facial recognition software or law enforcement databases. The glasses have raised a host of novel privacy concerns, as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself was reminded last month when he appeared in court for a civil lawsuit on social media addiction.

The judge warned that anyone who used smart glasses to record inside her courtroom must delete their footage or be held in contempt. Some of Zuckerberg’s entourage had been photographed wearing Meta smart glasses as they entered the Los Angeles courthouse.

“If your glasses are recording, you must take them off,” the judge said, according to the Los Angeles Times. “It is the order of this court that there must be no facial recognition of the jury. If you have done that, you must delete it. This is very serious.”

Homeland Security does not have a contract with Meta for the glasses, the agency told The Independent, a fact confirmed by a review of federal procurement records. DHS policy allows agents to wear their own sunglasses, but they are not authorized to record with personal devices.

Civil liberties groups are already alarmed by the rise in agents using government-sanctioned phones and body cams to surveil American citizens, even though the information they capture is still subject to strict rules. Border Patrol agents with body cameras, for instance, are required by department policy to record uses of force, and the data they record is preserved in accordance with guidelines from the National Archives and Records Administration.

But experts warn that government agents making personal recordings is a whole different ballgame.

Patrick G. Eddington, a surveillance analyst and senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, told The Independent that he is alarmed by the “widespread” use of Meta glasses by immigration officials, given the Trump administration’s position that citizens who record or protest agents are tantamount to a national security threat.

Federal agents are already threatening civil liberties by using government devices to film peaceful activists, he said. Non-violent protest and observation of government employees is “100 percent First Amendment-protected activity” that “shouldn’t end up on government databases.”

When agents use unregistered, personal devices to record citizens, it raises even bigger red flags, he said, given the Trump administration’s efforts to define criticism and observation of the government as evidence of criminality.

A September national security memo on domestic terrorism enforcement lists “anti-Americanism” and criticisms of “law enforcement and border control” as key indicators. The FBI has reportedly been directed to “compile a list of groups or entities” who hold such views, according to a DOJ memo obtained by reporter Ken Klippenstein. Outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, meanwhile, said in July that filming agents “when they’re out on operations” is a form of “violence.”

There are also reports from multiple cities that people who followed or filmed immigration agents at work have had their faces and license plates photographed, or had agents drive ominously past their homes. Eddington argues that all this speaks to a larger campaign of surveillance and intimidation at work.

Agents using off-the-books devices further allows the government to gather information on people lawfully exercising their constitutional rights, he said, and this data could fuel future searches or arrests.

“The purpose of it all, quite clearly, with this regime, is to gather as much data as they can on anybody who they believe is a threat to the regime,” Eddington said. “Anybody that’s basically opposing the regime.”

He added: “They are aggregating data on individuals and on groups and they are using it for the purpose of politically going after people. To me there’s just absolutely no doubt about it.”

Clear policies within each federal agency determine when agents turn on government-issued cameras and how this sensitive data is stored for later review.

Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst for the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, told The Independent that agents using their personal devices “eviscerates” these safeguards and is “characteristic of the lawlessness” of the Trump administration.

“If an officer is using their own personal device, that just blows out of the water any of the needed policies that have to accompany this form of government surveillance,” he said.

‘We have a nice little database and now you’re considered a domestic terrorist’

Agents have been seeing wearing Meta glasses during operations in six states, according to an analysis of video, high-definition news photography and media reports by The Independent.

Illinois resident Liz Myers said that two Border Patrol agents used Meta glasses to film her and other protesters during an immigration operation at a Home Depot parking lot in Evanston on December 17. Two people were arrested but their identities and alleged offenses remain unclear. The Independent has asked DHS for comment on the operation.

Myers’ video footage, reviewed by The Independent, shows two agents wearing Meta’s Ray-Ban-branded smart glasses. The glasses, which cost upwards of $379 depending on the features, are based on the popular Wayfarer model, but have circular, high-definition cameras at the side of each lens where a rivet would normally be. A white LED light above the right lens indicates that the glasses are recording and blinks on and off when a photo is taken, according to Meta.

Hackers claim the privacy light can easily be disabled, allowing users to record others without any visible indication they are doing so. Covers to block out the LED light are also being sold on Amazon by third parties.

Meta is exploring whether to officially add a facial recognition capability to the glasses, The New York Times did not provide a response on the record to questions from The Independent.

The video from Myers shows two agents in Meta glasses with the white lights activated looking towards her and fellow protesters. The military veteran says she didn’t realize she was being filmed at the time. She was alerted after providing her video to Northwestern University’s Daily Northwestern newspaper, which first spotted and subsequently reported that the two agents had been recording.

A Homeland Security spokesperson told The Independent: “The use of personal recording devices is not authorized. Recordings may only be done on government issued devices such as Go Pros or traditional DSLR handheld cameras.”

The Independent provided the images and footage it had reviewed to DHS, and asked if any agents filming with Meta glasses had been investigated or disciplined. “Our statement stands,” DHS responded.

Myers worries that agents are not only recording members of the public without their knowledge, but that the footage is being used to track critics of the Trump administration.

“They’re keeping records of people who are protesting them,” she claimed.

The Illinois activist’s concerns are warranted. Immigration agents are regularly seen recording members of the public, especially during tense confrontations.

ICE agent Jonathan Ross used his cell phone to record Minneapolis resident Renee Good, who had been observing agents from inside her SUV, moments before he fatally shot her in January. Agents were wearing body cameras when they fatally shot another protester, Alex Pretti, in Minneapolis that same month. Pretti had been pointing his phone at agents in the moments before he was killed.

During testimony before the Senate on February 12, ICE chief Todd Lyons was asked why Ross was filming during the encounter, and whether that reflected any official DHS policies. Lyons said that agents have been instructed to record video “if they were going to make an arrest, say of an agitator” and that “the U.S. attorney was requiring to have video leading up to the event.”

In January, an ICE agent in Maine allegedly photographed the license plate of a woman who had been filming earlier in the day as they made arrests.

In video of the incident, the agent told her, “We have a nice little database and now you’re considered a domestic terrorist.” The woman has since joined a class action lawsuit seeking to bar the Trump administration from “threatening, harassing, and otherwise retaliating” against Americans for exercising their First Amendment rights.

DHS has repeatedly denied there is any database cataloging people as terrorists if they observe or protest immigration operations.

“There is NO database of ‘domestic terrorists’ run by DHS,” a Homeland Security official told The Independent. “We do of course monitor and investigate and refer all threats, assaults and obstruction of our officers to the appropriate law enforcement. Obstructing and assaulting law enforcement is a felony and a federal crime.”

After the shootings of Good and Pretti, the Trump administration has cut back on the number of agents deployed for immigration raids in Minneapolis, but operations are expected to continue in other parts of the country.

‘Violating the Constitution’

In three instances in 2025 — the Evanston operation, plus deployments in Los Angeles and North Carolina — agents appeared to have used Meta glasses to record or photograph people.

Agents were also seen wearing the glasses in New Jersey, Louisiana and Minnesota, but The Independent did not find evidence that they were used to record or take photos.

On May 7, 2025, a masked agent wearing a vest from ICE’s elite Enforcement and Removal Operations special response team was photographed wearing Meta sunglasses while guarding an immigrant detention center in Newark, New Jersey.

Immigration agents were also seen wearing Meta glasses last summer in Los Angeles, when teams poured into the city in response to widespread anti-deportation protests.

A Border Patrol agent was wearing Meta glasses during a June 30 raid near a Home Depot in Cypress Park, tech news site 404 Media reported. It is unclear if the agent used the glasses to record.

A July 7 photo, from the AFP news agency, shows an agent from Border Patrol’s elite Bortac special operations unit wearing the glasses while hanging from an armored vehicle near MacArthur Park in LA. A white light is visible on the right-side lens, suggesting the agent was recording or taking a photo at the time.

A Getty photograph from December 5 shows a Border Patrol agent wearing Meta glasses at a park in Metairie, Louisiana, during ongoing operations in the New Orleans area. The agent did not appear to be recording.

In December, 404 Media reported that a Border Patrol agent was recording with Meta glasses during an immigration raid in Charlotte, North Carolina.

More recently, photos from the Getty news agency showed one or more agents in smart glasses on January 9 and January 12 in Minneapolis. The sunglasses’ recording light was not on in either photo. The individual in both photos appeared to be part of a larger group of agents carrying out roving operations across the city.

Deepening ties

The Trump administration continues to deepen its ties with surveillance and tech companies. The White House is supporting the rapid build-out of AI data centers, and it has integrated AI tools from powerful companies like OpenAI and xAI — the latter run by former Trump adviser Elon Musk — into U.S. national security systems.

DHS has at least $1 billion in contracts and purchasing agreements with Palantir, a longstanding tech contractor co-founded by past Trump donor Peter Thiel, for AI and data mining to track and identify migrants for deportation.

Customs and Border Protection also recently struck a one-year deal to access Clearview AI’s facial recognition tool, which allows users to compare their photos to billions of public images scraped from the internet.

Stephen Miller, the Trump administration’s homeland security adviser, disclosed last year he was an investor in Palantir, a firm which donated heavily to pro-Trump PACs during the 2024 election and later donated to the president’s White House ballroom project.

Meta, meanwhile, donated to Trump’s inauguration and his ballroom, and Zuckerberg visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago shortly after the election. The Meta CEO was among the Silicon Valley guests of honor when Trump was sworn in for a second term last January.

Myers, the Illinois protester, believes the surveillance and recording is reflective of the larger, aggressive approach to immigration enforcement by the Trump administration. She witnessed an incident in October 2025 where agents pinned a man to the ground and struck him in the face while he was restrained.

“I am a vet,” Myers said. “I served in the Army during the first Gulf War. I took an oath to defend the Constitution, and everything that they’re doing is violating the Constitution in several ways. I do see them as being domestic terrorists.”

Justin Rohrlich contributed reporting to this story