Welcome back to ICE Watch. This month join me on a virtual ICE chaser tour! We know San Antonio, Texas, is one of the most active cities in the U.S. for ICE detentions (following Miami, Dallas, and Atlanta). But so much of that landscape is still largely invisible to residents. This tour won’t be a joyride, but hopefully it'll be an eye-opening recorrido through our city.
We’ll take note of the places and elements that put ICE enforcement on the map. Here we’ll reveal many of the not-so-hidden coordinates of the deportation machine to help you identify just how widespread the machine has become. We intend to make visible how local and state leaders have allowed the quiet, yet persistent and increasingly prevalent, kidnappings of our community members.
In this installment of ICE Watch, I draw a geography of state-sponsored fear to help us all keep up with this fast-shifting and frequently terrifying terrain.
—Roxana Rojas
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I spy with my little eye…
As children we played this game in the car on family road trips. It helped distract bouncy minds from whatever our elders wanted us to forget about (for me it was usually a catalog of “what’s that place?” questions, “where are we?” and “how much longer?”). It forced us back into the present moment and made us more aware of our surroundings.
I challenge you now to survey your surroundings as you go about town and ask yourself what you see. It may be something that’s looking back at you? Scanning your face? Reading your gait? Clocking your license plates and turning you into a time stamp on a data set? Widely decried ALPRs, or Automatic License Plate Readers, are an all-too-common device on area roadways. But what are they, and how have they suddenly crept into our lives—leeching off our data and creating a system of surveillance that has resulted in the arrest of innocent individuals and, in some cases, violent encounters?
“I spy something…that starts with the letter F.”
The principal provider of ALPRs nationally is Flock Safety. This company went from providing private security to large-scale surveillance of the public through its contracts with law enforcement agencies across the country. (On the interactive map below, you can click on the timeline and see the boom of cameras surge in San Antonio around the summer of last year).
While information gathered by these cameras was originally only accessible through warrant searches, this data is now being captured, stored, and sold in package deals. SAPD has hosted 20 Flock cameras since July 2025, along with additional cameras owned and acquired at the same time by Selma PD, Castle Hills PD, Converse PD, and Live Oak PD. Alamo Heights PD has had ALPRs from Vigilant Solutions since 2019. And Balcones Heights PD was first awarded a grant for ALPRs in 2022.
San Antonio PD has its own additional contracts with a similar company, Axon, for body cameras, dash cameras, and the accompanying software and storage of data captured. Though lesser known in the ALPR game, Axon is increasingly stepping in where Flock cameras have been damaged or opposed. So where are these cameras in San Antonio? How can we spot them, and—perhaps more importantly—how can we take back control of our privacy?
Take a look at this map:
