Collection

Live facial recognition in Immigration Enforcement

This page provides information about how live facial recognition is used by Immigration Enforcement to support its operational duties.

• From: Home Office and Immigration Enforcement
• Published: 5 November 2025

Immigration Enforcement uses live facial recognition (LFR) to identify and locate people they are looking for as part of their law enforcement duties.

Facial recognition is a technology that can compare a human face in a digital image with a watchlist of faces.

Live facial recognition (LFR)

Live facial recognition (LFR) compares a live camera feed of faces against a predetermined watchlist in real time. It is used to locate and identify people who are of interest by generating an alert when a possible match is found.

Immigration Enforcement and Border Force are trialling the use of live facial recognition in the Holyhead Port week commencing 10 November 2025 for a duration of 3 days.

More information on live facial recognition (LFR) can be found in the documents below.

Documents

• Immigration Enforcement facial recognition policy
  • 5 November 2025
  • Policy paper
• Live facial recognition: equality impact assessment (EIA)
  • 5 November 2025
  • Policy paper
• Live facial recognition: data protection impact assessments (DPIA) template
  • 5 November 2025
  • Policy paper
• Immigration Enforcement: live facial recognition legal mandate
  • 5 November 2025
  • Policy paper
• Live facial recognition standard operating procedures
  • 5 November 2025
  • Policy paper
• Processing special categories and criminal convictions data
  • 5 November 2025
  • Policy paper
• Policy on sensitive processing for law enforcement purposes, under Part 3 DPA (2018)
  • 5 November 2025
  • Policy paper

Published 5 November 2025