Border Officers Were Caught Using Government Surveillance Tools to Spy on People They Knew
US Customs and Border Protection officers used government surveillance databases to spy on family members, pursue romantic interests, track coworkers, and share information with suspected drug traffickers, according to records obtained by Wired and reported on August 13, 2026. The records document roughly 300 incidents spanning from 2009 to 2022 Engadget.
The databases pull together several kinds of information: license plate readers (cameras that automatically capture and store plate numbers), facial recognition systems, and smartphone location data bought from advertising companies. Specific incidents in the files include a CBP officer using a government database to contact a flight attendant, another using trusted-traveler application data to ask people out, one employee giving border-crossing records to someone involved in a divorce, and another tracking coworkers' phones using location data from ad companies Wired.
Of the 300 incidents Wired tracked, 138 were referred to CBP management and 78 were assigned to criminal investigators. Twenty-one incidents were withheld from release because of potential law-enforcement proceedings, suggesting criminal misconduct. Forty-three incidents were not investigated at all Engadget.
The amount of data available to CBP officers is large. Wired noted that the Department of Homeland Security has built one of the biggest surveillance systems in the world, combining immigration arrest records, border screening records, citizenship applications, and the SENTRI trusted-traveler program. The department also uses systems built by the company Palantir and a facial-recognition app called Mobile Fortify that runs directly on agents' phones Engadget.
CBP told Wired it takes misconduct allegations seriously and works to uphold the rule of law and take appropriate investigatory, corrective, and disciplinary action. The agency also maintains a public "Stats and Summaries" page whose stated purpose is to increase transparency and awareness of CBP's efforts to prevent, detect, and investigate misconduct CBP.
This pattern is not new within DHS. A 2009 report from the department's internal watchdog, the Office of Inspector General, said DHS has a duty to protect personal information from loss and misuse. A 2016 report defined serious misconduct to include misuse of government databases, abuse of position for personal gain, and association with known criminals. That same year, Inspector General John Roth reported that an investigation found personnel and database resources were misused by Washington Field Office "Prowler" teams DHS OIG.
Keeping track of who accesses these databases remains a structural problem. A 2023 watchdog report found that CBP could not provide audit logs (records showing who looked at what and when) from one database provider. A CBP official told investigators the provider simply did not respond to the request. Without those logs, going back to check whether someone misused the database is effectively impossible DHS OIG.
The Brennan Center for Justice documented in 2020 that law enforcement agencies have a history of misusing license plate surveillance to monitor activity protected by the First Amendment, such as protests. That research focused on automatic license plate readers, one of the same data sources feeding the CBP databases at issue now Brennan Center.
CBP's own budget testimony from April 2024 requested funding for an additional 150 CBP officers and 121 support personnel to address "dynamic threats and increasing workload" in port-of-entry operations. The FOIA files, covering a 13-year window, raise the question of what oversight exists for the workforce already in place CBP.
The incidents span more than a decade and range from petty personal misconduct to potential criminal collusion with drug traffickers. That range matters. A handful of rogue officers abusing access is an enforcement problem. Hundreds of incidents over thirteen years, with forty-three never investigated and audit logs missing from at least one database provider, is an architecture problem. The surveillance tools DHS has built collect enormous amounts of data, but the systems meant to control and monitor who accesses that data evidently cannot reliably prevent or detect misuse by their own operators.
In this author's view, the 2023 finding that a database provider failed to respond to a request for audit logs is the most important detail in the entire record. If you cannot produce logs showing who accessed what, then every promise about access controls and accountability is built on a foundation you cannot verify. The incidents in the FOIA files may be only the ones where misuse was caught; cases that went undetected would not appear in the files at all.
CBP's stated commitment to disciplinary action addresses the back end of the problem. The front end, controlling who can access these databases and independently verifying every query, is where the work remains.
