February 26, 2026 Across the United States, residents are dismantling and destroying Flock licence plate readers. The incidents, arising from anger that the data can be used in federal immigration raids, show how local policing tools are increasingly entangled in national immigration enforcement.
Flock, an Atlanta-based company valued at US$7.5 billion last year, operates a vast network of cameras that photograph licence plates and log time-and-location data. The company is facing heat due to allegations that it gave the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) access to its network of national license plate readers and databases in support of the agency’s immigration crackdown.
While it says it does not share information directly with ICE, reporting shows local police agencies have shared their access to Flock databases and cameras with federal authorities during the immigration crackdown.
The scale is significant. According to DeFlock, a project mapping licence plate readers, nearly 80,000 such cameras are installed across the country. The system allows authorities to reconstruct where a vehicle has travelled and when, raising concerns among civil liberties advocates about de facto mass location tracking.
The dispute has escalated from city council chambers to the street. In La Mesa, Calif., residents opposed the continuation of Flock’s camera programme, yet the city council voted to keep it. Weeks later, multiple cameras were reported smashed. Similar incidents have been documented in California, Connecticut, Illinois and Virginia. In Oregon, six cameras were cut down from poles, with one spray-painted and a note left behind mocking the surveillance effort. It is unclear how many cameras have been destroyed.
According to DeFlock, a project that maps licence plate reader deployments, there are nearly 80,000 such cameras across the United States. At the same time, dozens of cities have rejected Flock contracts, and some police departments have restricted federal agencies’ ability to access locally controlled systems.
