Feds monitoring, detaining drivers

A secretive Border Patrol program is focused on 'suspicious' travel patterns in U.S.

- BY BYRON TAU AND GARANCE BURKE

KAYLA BARTKOWSKI Los Angeles Times AUTOMATED license plate readers at L.A.'s Washington and La Cienega boulevards on Thursday.

The U.S. Border Patrol is monitoring millions of American drivers nationwide in a secretive program to identify and detain people whose travel patterns it deems suspicious, the Associated Press learned.

The predictive intelligence program has resulted in people being stopped, searched and in some cases arrested. A network of cameras scans and records vehicle license plate information, and an algorithm flags vehicles deemed suspicious based on where they came from, where they were going and which route they took. Federal agents in turn may then flag local law enforcement.

Suddenly, drivers find themselves pulled over — often for reasons cited such as speeding, failure to signal, the wrong window tint or even a dangling air freshener blocking the view. They are then aggressively questioned and searched, with no inkling that the roads they drove put them on law enforcement’s radar.

Once limited to policing the nation’s boundaries, the Border Patrol has built a surveillance system stretching into the country’s interior that can monitor ordinary Americans’ daily actions and connections for anomalies instead of simply targeting wanted suspects.

Started about a decade ago to fight illegal border-related activities and the trafficking of drugs and people, it has expanded over the last five years.

The Border Patrol recently has grown even more powerful through collaborations with other agencies, drawing information from license plate readers nationwide run by the Drug Enforcement Administration, private companies and, increasingly, local law enforcement programs funded through federal grants. Texas law enforcement agencies asked Border Patrol to use facial recognition to identify drivers, documents show.