Texas school districts expose how police use cameras for immigration checks

License plate readers track cars at schools

Police departments across the country are using license plate cameras at public schools to help carry out immigration enforcement.

A joint investigation by The 74 and The Guardian, published Feb. 10, 2026, uncovered the practice through hundreds of thousands of audit logs from six Texas school districts.

The cameras, made by Atlanta-based Flock Safety, capture plate numbers, timestamps, and vehicle details, then upload everything to a cloud server.

School districts can share that data with other police agencies through Flock’s national network.

One Texas district logged 733,000 searches

The numbers from one district tell the story. Alvin Independent School District, south of Houston, serves about 30,000 students and has eight Flock cameras.

Over a single month from December 2025 through early January 2026, more than 3,100 police agencies ran over 733,000 searches on those cameras.

Of those, 30 law enforcement agencies ran 620 immigration-related searches. Those agencies came from multiple states, including Florida, Georgia, Indiana, and Tennessee.

Out-of-state officers searched the district’s cameras far more often than local police did.

Civil immigration searches outnumbered criminal ones

Flock requires agencies to pick from a list of reasons when they run a search.

Two categories flagged immigration: one for civil or administrative cases, the other for criminal cases.

Civil searches, which target people suspected of being in the country unlawfully rather than criminal suspects, outnumbered criminal immigration searches by more than two to one.

Alvin ISD’s own officers could not search their cameras for immigration reasons. But the system let out-of-state officers run those same searches without restriction.

Staff gave Border Patrol direct camera access

At Huffman Independent School District, northeast of Houston, a campus police chief’s administrative assistant gave U.S. Border Patrol direct access to the district’s Flock cameras in May 2025.

The investigation found no evidence that school districts themselves used the cameras for immigration purposes. There is also no sign that districts knew other agencies were using their camera data for enforcement.

Huffman ISD’s spokesperson said the district is reviewing the situation but declined further comment. Alvin ISD provided public records but did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Georgia officers confirmed running federal searches

A lieutenant with the Carrollton, Ga., police department confirmed his officers ran immigration searches at the request of the Department of Homeland Security.

He said federal agents worked directly with a Carrollton officer who had Flock access, and the officer ran the search when asked.

He added that if federal agents ask for help with an immigration case, his department will assist without hesitation. Flock searches are typically broad national queries, meaning officers do not pick individual cameras.

Flock Safety did not respond to requests for comment.

Flock cameras cover more than 100 school systems

Flock’s reach in schools is wide. More than 100 public school systems across the country have installed the company’s devices, according to government procurement records.

The cameras sit in school parking lots, on utility poles at intersections, and along busy streets. They can identify a vehicle’s make, model, color, and features like bumper stickers and temporary plates.

Flock’s network performs over 20 billion vehicle scans per month, making it the largest system of its kind in the country.

Earlier reports flagged ICE using Flock data

Warning signs appeared months before the latest investigation.

In May 2025, the tech outlet 404 Media first reported that ICE used Flock data through local police acting as go-betweens.

The University of Washington Center for Human Rights found that at least eight Washington state agencies shared Flock data directly with the U.S. Border Patrol during 2025.

In Virginia, audit logs showed nearly 3,000 immigration-related searches over 12 months.

Flock admitted in August 2025 that it had run a pilot program with Customs and Border Protection, then paused all federal pilots.

Trump ended decades-old school protections

On Jan. 20, 2025, the Trump administration ended the “sensitive locations” policy that had limited immigration enforcement near schools, hospitals, and churches.

That policy had existed in some form since 1993 and grew under the Obama and Biden administrations. It had required agents to get advance written approval before taking enforcement action at or near schools.

The new directive told agents to use “common sense” instead. The change also removed protections that covered school bus stops, parking lots, and surrounding areas.

Attendance dropped sharply in some districts

The shift hit schools hard. Immigrant families have faced enforcement actions during school drop-offs and pick-ups.

In Minnesota, attendance dropped by one-third in some districts after ICE operations began in the area. Some districts offered remote learning for families who did not feel safe coming to school.

A December 2025 UCLA study found that more than two-thirds of high school principals reported students from immigrant families had raised concerns about their well-being.

Teachers’ unions filed federal lawsuits

The American Federation of Teachers sued the Trump administration in September 2025 over the end of the sensitive locations policy.

AFT President Randi Weingarten said schools should not be “targets for warrantless surveillance.”

In February 2026, Minnesota school districts and the state’s teachers union filed a separate federal lawsuit demanding the policy be restored.

That suit described federal agents in school parking lots, following superintendents, and detaining staff during school hours. The ACLU and Electronic Frontier Foundation have also challenged Flock’s network in courts.

Cities canceling Flock contracts over immigration concerns

Multiple cities have canceled or paused their Flock contracts, including Austin, Texas, Denver, Santa Cruz, Calif., and Eugene, Ore. At least five states have blocked ICE from accessing their driver’s license records: Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, and Washington.

Washington state introduced a bipartisan bill in early 2026 to ban the use of license plate reader data for immigration enforcement.

Several California cities and counties, including Santa Clara County, are reviewing or suspending their Flock agreements.

Parents can ask districts tough questions

Parents and community members can ask their school districts whether they use Flock or other automated license plate readers, and whether that data is shared with outside agencies.

Advocacy groups recommend that districts review their data-sharing agreements and limit access to camera feeds.

Federal law under FERPA restricts the release of student records, but license plate data may not fall under those protections.

The NOTICE Coalition, the group that obtained the audit logs, has called on districts to demand transparency from Flock.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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