The documents, including a guidance document for immigration enforcement officials published on 8 October and a data protection impact assessment made public later that month, outline plans to deploy LFR cameras for “general immigration enforcement”, including non-criminal immigration offences and immigration-related criminality.
The technology will be used to identify people “seeking to re-enter the UK unlawfully”, target those subject to removal action, and crack down on “immigration-related criminality”. The Home Office states the cameras will be used to locate undocumented people to resolve their cases, which it says will reduce “disruption to the wider public compared to repeated enforcement visits at residential addresses or workplaces”.
The documents suggest people could be placed on LFR watchlists for overstaying a visa without permission or entering without leave, both civil rather than criminal matters. The policy states no one under 18 will be included on a watchlist.
The developments follow Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s decision to double the immigration enforcement budget and increase its workforce by 60% to allow “tens of thousands” more raids, arrests and deportations.
Between November last year and February, immigration enforcement conducted three LFR trials at Holyhead port in north Wales, focused narrowly on locating people travelling to the UK from Ireland through the common travel area who were in breach of deportation orders or on a warrant for “an immigration-related criminal offence”. The LFR project “has now moved into the formal delivery phase”, the documents state.
Locations where immigration enforcement could deploy cameras for “proactive” deployments have been expanded to include transport hubs and “specific” events “expected to increase footfall at a location”, though no specific geography is named. A list of potential higher-risk deployments includes locations with “heightened community sensitivity”. The Home Office declined to clarify what it meant by “events” or “sensitive locations”.
A Home Office spokesperson confirmed it was “considering further trials” of LFR and “actively exploring the potential benefits, implications and future use of the technology”.
Campaign groups criticised the expansion. Griff Ferris, a spokesperson for the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, said immigration enforcement already employed tactics that “persecute and terrorise migrant communities” and giving it more power to use a “racist mass surveillance tool in public places is frightening”.
Sarah Lasoye of the Open Rights Group said immigration enforcement “appear to be giving themselves the green light to expand use of highly controversial facial recognition technologies without scrutiny, transparency or public consent”. She said: “Immigration enforcement and police forces are exploiting an absence of national legislation regulating uses of AI technologies, including facial recognition, in the public sector.”
The biometrics and surveillance camera commissioner, William Webster, told Liberty Investigates, which first uncovered the documents, that he was not consulted on the policy and that the use of LFR for immigration purposes fell outside his remit. He added that the “proliferation of LFR into different service contexts does raise important questions about the scope of existing regulatory oversight”, which he hopes will be addressed in the forthcoming legislative framework for facial recognition.