Public records showed out-of-state agencies searched Twin Falls, Idaho Flock network 631 times for immigration enforcement, violating state law

Public records obtained by the activist group DeFlock Idaho and reported by the Idaho Capital Sun on August 11, 2026 show that out-of-state law enforcement agencies searched the Twin Falls, Idaho Police Department's Flock automated license-plate-reader (ALPR) network for immigration-enforcement purposes at least 631 times during March, May and June 2026. The records identify searches from Indiana State Police -- including one logged at 1:42 p.m. on May 3, 2026 with the stated reason "Immigration (civil/administrative)" -- Georgia's Lawrenceville Police Department, Florida's Bay County Sheriff's Office and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, among other unnamed agencies, all conducted through Flock's national network-sharing feature that lets any participating agency query cameras nationwide by reciprocity.

The searches evaded two separate restrictions. Idaho Code 49-1432 limits ALPR searches to investigating felonies, misdemeanors, traffic accidents or missing and endangered persons, not immigration enforcement. Twin Falls PD separately maintains a written policy, listed on Flock's own Transparency Portal, barring its cameras from immigration-related use; Lt. Steven Gassert said the department denies weekly requests from the FBI and immigration agencies for direct camera access. Because the national lookup system operates on automatic reciprocity, any participating agency could query Twin Falls' cameras for an immigration-enforcement purpose regardless of the host department's own restrictions, and Twin Falls PD had no way to block an incoming query itself -- only to withhold data if a plate happened to match.

Gassert told the Idaho Capital Sun the immigration-purpose searches did not produce any actual data pulls from Twin Falls' cameras, though the system would have automatically forwarded a match to the requesting agency had one occurred. The Idaho Attorney General's Office did not respond to the Capital Sun's request for comment on whether the out-of-state searches constitute a punishable violation of state law.

Updates

2026-07-22 — Twin Falls PD ended the national lookup sharing that had allowed the searches [2]

About a month after the immigration-purpose searches were conducted, Twin Falls PD stopped other agencies from searching its Flock cameras through the national lookup feature, effective July 22, 2026. Gassert said the change was not a response to the immigration searches specifically -- which he said the department had not yet been asked about -- but part of ongoing program review; it was announced publicly, alongside a decision to revoke Flock's permission to use Twin Falls data for AI-training purposes, at a July 27 city council meeting held after a standing-room-only crowd raised broader surveillance concerns about the ALPR program.