Advocates urge San Diego leaders to end license plate surveillance system amid Trump immigration crackdown

As the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown increasingly impacts San Diego, privacy advocates are renewing calls to terminate a controversial police surveillance program.

Critics of the San Diego Police Department’s automated license plate reader (ALPR) program argue the technology is inefficient, costly and potentially violates state laws aimed at limiting data-sharing between local and federal law enforcement entities.

They are asking the City Council to defund the program as members deliberate on the upcoming fiscal year’s budget.

The SDPD’s ALPR system captures data of millions of vehicles throughout San Diego every month — including color, make and model of each vehicle as well as their location and which direction they are going.

That information is stored in a database that multiple federal law enforcement agencies have access to, including Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

The system allows SDPD to choose which agencies it shares data with. For example, it could limit data sharing to only law enforcement agencies in San Diego County or only within California. In annual reports, SDPD states that data shared with CBP was “shared for criminal investigations unrelated to immigration.”

Critics of the program claim that SDPD’s practice of sharing data with federal agencies violates SB 34, a state law passed in 2015 that regulates the use of ALPR systems.

That law prohibits local police departments from sharing ALPR data with, “private entities or out-of-state or federal agencies, including out-of-state and federal law enforcement agencies,” according to an October 2023 guidance issued by California Attorney General Rob Bonta.

The city purchased the ALPR system from Flock, a Georgia-based company that has a long history of working with federal immigration enforcement.

News reports from Georgia, Texas and Illinois show local police departments in those states use Flock databases to share their local vehicle information with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — specifically to identify and arrest immigrants without legal status.

“We are deeply concerned that ALPR data can potentially be accessed and utilized by federal immigration agencies to deport immigrant community members,” said Erin Tsurumoto Grassi, associate director of Alliance San Diego. “City Council has the moral obligation to pull funding from ALPRs and instead put it into resources that protect and welcome immigrants.”

A SDPD spokesperson and Mayor Todd Gloria did not respond to questions from KPBS. Rachel Laing, the mayor’s spokesperson, told KPBS that this issue “is the subject of current policy deliberations,” and that she will have more to say once a decision has been made.

‘More burdensome than beneficial’

The Transparent and Responsible Use of Surveillance Technology (TRUST) Coalition is made up of more than 30 local advocacy organizations. It has for years been a vocal critic of the city’s expanding surveillance infrastructure.

Besides potentially putting immigrants at risk of deportation, TRUST advocates argue San Diego’s ALPR system is overpriced and inefficient.

“If you cut the license plate reader program, you could keep libraries open all over the city for an extra half day,” said Lilly Irani, a member of the TRUST Coalition.

TRUST’s 2025 surveillance report uses FBI data to show that the SDPD’s success in catching car thieves has barely improved since ALPR technology was introduced in 2021. The report also criticizes the fact that less than 1% of all searches result in usable information.

The vast majority of ALPR data is “not only unhelpful, but also tracking the movements of people the police have no good reason to suspect, investigate or to create data about,” the report said.

The city’s Privacy Advisory Board reached a similar conclusion in its 2025 annual report. SDPD conducted more than 140,000 queries in the city’s ALPR database during the last fiscal year. But by the department’s own accounting, only 0.2% of those searches resulted in information that assisted in a successful investigation.

The city spent nearly $5 million on this program over the last two fiscal years. In an April memo submitted to the City Council , the Privacy Advisory Board said, “This technology is more burdensome than beneficial.”

Despite this criticism, the police department continues to defend the ALPR program as a valuable crime-fighting tool.

In its annual surveillance report, the police department praised its ALPR system as a “very effective,” tool in combating crime, specifically car theft. The report says officers conduct “weekly audits” of the system and report no violations with SDPD policy or procedure.

Critics point to the fact that internal audits report zero violations even though the agency shared data with federal law enforcement agencies, as a sign that local regulations are not enough.

“The regulations have obviously failed, and this is a tool that’s too dangerous to actually have in public use,” Irani said.

Oversight success

Tim Blood, a member of the Privacy Advisory Board, points to an interaction with the San Diego Fire Department as an example of local oversight working.

As part of the city’s TRUST ordinance, every department has to compile an annual report on surveillance technology they use. That report includes a list of common questions to respond to in the report.

It was during that process that SDFD officials noticed they had given ICE access to cameras lifeguards use along the coast in Mission Beach and Ocean Beach.

“Rather than try to hide it, rather than run from it, they said, 'hey, this is an opportunity for us to fix the problem,'" Blood said, who is also a consumer protection lawyer.

The SDFD worked with the Privacy Advisory Board to update its use policy to no longer share that camera data with ICE, Blood said.

The board is currently engaged in active conversations with the police department to address community concerns, Blood said.