Every Cochise County police agency will soon use the same iris scanners ICE deploys

Every law enforcement agency in
Cochise County will soon be using the same iris-scanning technology as
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

This week, the Cochise County
Sheriff’s Office announced that, with the support of the Western States
Sheriff’s Association, it and every municipal police department in the
county would be adopting the biometric tech.

“This is about accuracy, safety and
accountability,” Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels said in a
statement. “By ensuring every law enforcement agency in Cochise County
is connected to the same secure biometric identification system we are
protecting our deputies, our partner agencies and the public by making
sure the right person is identified every time.”

The Cochise County Sheriff’s Office
did not respond to questions about how the technology will be deployed
and if ICE or other federal agencies will also have access to its data.

Earlier this year, the company that
makes the software Cochise County law enforcement will be using landed a
lucrative sole-source contract with ICE for the exact same technology.

Massachusetts based BI² Technologies’ $10 million ICE contract is for the Inmate Recognition and Identification System, or I.R.I.S., software. The company claims to already have a database of upwards of a million scans of irises, and even has a mobile platform that purports to allow police officers to use their cellphones to scan the irises of people they encounter in order to verify their identities.

ICE has been purchasing the mobile units for their deportation efforts, according to reporting by 404 Media. The contract
also states that ICE intends to allow “agents and 287(g) partners to
quickly authenticate the identity of subjects during field operations.”

A 287(g) agreement is one in which
local sheriffs or police departments can partner with ICE to train
officers to identify and flag people who may be eligible for deportation
during routine traffic stops or jail bookings, even if charges against
them haven’t been proven. Cochise County entered into a 287(g) contract in August 2025.

Shortly after President Donald Trump
was elected to a second term in 2024, the company hired lobbyists from a
firm with connections to Trump’s second administration. Ballard
Partners was opened in part by Susie Wiles, who is now Trump’s chief of
staff, and former Attorney General Pam Bondi used to work there,
according to reporting by the Project on Government Oversight Investigates.

POGO Investigates also found that BI² Technologies offered border sheriffs free use of the IRIS technology
for three years during the first Trump administration, and an investor
in the company attempted to get a meeting between the CEO and an advisor
to Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, according to The Intercept.

While Dannels has touted the
technology as a way to ensure “accuracy” and “safety,” historical uses
of biometric technology have shown that it is not as foolproof as
proponents say.

In 2012, researchers showed that iris scanners could be tricked
with synthetic irises. A 2012 National Institute of Standards and
Technology report also found that the miss rate for the technology can be between 2.5% to 20%.

While the technology has often been touted as the most secure way to identify an individual, it has been proven to be able to be bypassed or have errors.

Prior to its use by American police
agencies, the technology was used by the military in Iraq and
Afghanistan. The biometric data in Afghanistan was abandoned
during the United States’ withdrawal, leading to not just biometric
data but data connecting individuals to family members, work history and
more in the hands of the Taliban.

In 2022, a military biometric device was sold on eBay with the information still on it.