DHS takes down its facial-recognition directive, calls it website maintenance as use expands

DHS issued Directive 026-11 in September 2023. It said facial recognition could not be the sole basis for enforcement, barred systemic or indiscriminate monitoring and targeting people for exercising constitutional rights, gave people an opt-out in some non-law-enforcement uses, and required headquarters-level review for ICE and CBP uses. Online archives reviewed by WIRED show the directive disappeared from DHS's website three weeks after President Trump's January 2025 inauguration.

DHS told Biometric Update the removal was routine website maintenance, not a policy change. But a May 2025 Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board report said DHS had not clarified whether the directive still applied or whether it planned a replacement. In February 2026, EPIC's Jeramie Scott told WIRED that DHS had not publicly replaced it. The Brennan Center's data, current through July 26, 2026, still described the policy as taken down and said it was unclear what policy, if any, governed DHS's use of facial recognition.

DHS expanded its use while leaving that question unanswered. WIRED found that Mobile Fortify was fast-tracked in May 2025, less than two months after the directive disappeared, after ICE and CBP assumed more control over privacy review. By July 2026, the Brennan Center found more than $1 billion spent or promised on biometrics in recent years, including mobile face and iris matching that put the capability directly in agents' hands.

How we know: WIRED, Biometric Update and the Brennan Center read directly Oct. 3, 2026. The date is corrected from February 2026 to February 2025. DHS says the takedown did not change policy; the same public record shows no replacement people could inspect and continuing uncertainty about what rules governed expanding use.