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How are they using them, since there is not a database of people's scans? Seems like a hard business to start. What is the approach?
There IS a database — BI2 built it over 20 years by scanning inmates at jail booking, giving them 5+ million records from 47 states before ICE ever bought in.
Why it matters: The jail-booking pipeline is the business model: BI2 gave the system away cheaply (or free) to sheriffs to build the database, then monetized it by selling federal access.
- Every time someone is booked into a local jail, a camera captures their irises; BI2's software converts that image into an encrypted digital template stored in its national database — the same process as fingerprint cards, just newer.
- More than 2,100 of the country's ~3,000 sheriffs enrolled, meaning the database skews heavily toward people with any prior arrest record across 47 states — roughly 1.5 million unique individuals behind the 5 million booking records.
- In the field, an ICE agent holds a smartphone 10–15 inches from a person's face, scans their iris in under 8 seconds, and gets a match (or no match) against that jail-booking dataset — no DNA lab, no documents required.
- BI2 offered the system free to border sheriffs as recently as 2023 to expand the database; that seeding strategy is what made it valuable enough for ICE to pay $25 million for access.
Room for disagreement
- Civil liberties groups argue the database is only useful for people with prior criminal bookings, making it poorly suited for immigration enforcement (most undocumented people have no arrest record) — ICE counters that even partial ID confirmation shortens removal timelines and catches people who gave false names at prior arrests.
AI-generated with web search — may be wrong. Check the linked sources.
