Police departments from Texas to Indiana ran more than 1,500 searches of Holyoke’s license plate reader data between January and August of this year with a justification that included the word “immigration.” Several hundred of those cited Immigration and Customs Enforcement specifically. In one case in August, law enforcement from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission searched thousands of city databases nationwide, Holyoke’s among them, and gave its reason as “Immigration (criminal) – I.C.E.”
Holyoke’s police chief did not know. “I don’t think anyone was, to be honest with you,” Chief Brian Keenan told The Republican, which obtained the Flock audit records through a public records request. “There were too many things going on. Once we became aware of it, we tightened it up.” Asked about the immigration searches, he said: “I was surprised.”
This is the third distinct way Massachusetts license plate reader systems have failed in a month, and it is the one with the clearest legal dimension. This piece explains what the audits show, why Flock can accurately say it does not share data with ICE while this happens anyway, and how the practice sits against a Massachusetts rule that police here have no authority to hold anyone for civil immigration enforcement.
What the audits show
The numbers in The Republican’s analysis are the part worth sitting with.
Outside police departments queried Holyoke’s plate reader data nearly 300,000 times in August alone. Between January and August 2026, outside law enforcement ran roughly 4.5 million queries against Flock data including Holyoke’s. More than 1,500 of those searches carried an immigration-related justification, and several hundred named ICE.
Holyoke has two Flock cameras. That is the scale of exposure a two-camera town generates once nationwide sharing is switched on.
As of September 1 the department limited sharing to New England, New Jersey and New York. Keenan says the city will let the remaining two contracts lapse when they expire in 2027, and will likely replace them with readers from a different vendor. “We’re trying to balance public safety with personal liberties,” he said. Mayor Joshua A. Garcia did not respond to requests for comment.
Why Flock’s denial and these searches are both true
Flock states on its website that it does not share data with ICE, and there is no reason to doubt it. The searches in the Holyoke audit were not run by ICE.
They were run by local and state police departments, in other states, that entered an immigration-related reason in the justification field. Some of those departments have agreements with ICE or have officers deputized to enforce civil immigration law under section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act. As Gideon Epstein, policy counsel for the ACLU of Massachusetts, put it, departments with ICE contracts that are deputized for civil immigration enforcement have searched Flock data.
So the corporate policy and the practical result diverge. The company does not give ICE an account. It gives accounts to thousands of police departments, some of which are functionally doing immigration enforcement, and the network lets any of them query any participating community’s data.
The justification field is the only control, and it is a free-text box. Nobody approves it in advance. It is what makes the audit possible afterward, which is how this became public, and it is also a reminder that the audit is a record rather than a gate.
One limit on what the records prove: the plate numbers in the audit are redacted, so it is not possible to tell whether any given search returned a Massachusetts plate. Epstein said the redaction “leaves that possibility open.” Nobody can currently say that a Holyoke resident was located this way, and nobody can say one was not.
The Massachusetts law this runs against
Massachusetts does not participate in civil immigration enforcement the way many states do, and the reason is a court decision rather than a statute.
In Lunn v. Commonwealth, 477 Mass. 517 (2017), the Supreme Judicial Court held that Massachusetts court officers and state and local law enforcement have no authority under state law to arrest or hold a person solely on a federal civil immigration detainer. There is no statutory or common law authority for it. The Legislature has never enacted one.
Lunn is about custody, not data, and it does not prohibit anyone from running a plate query. But it establishes the baseline: Massachusetts law enforcement has no role in civil immigration enforcement absent legislation, and there has been none. A Massachusetts city whose surveillance data is queried hundreds of times for immigration purposes is contributing to an enforcement activity its own officers are not permitted to perform.
That is a policy problem with a legal shadow rather than a clear violation, and it is exactly the gap that H.3755 was written to close. That bill would have set statewide rules for plate reader data, including limits on sharing. It cleared committee unanimously in March and died in Ways and Means. We covered it in Massachusetts had a Flock camera bill. Lawmakers are pushing new rules again this month.
Three failures, three different causes
It is worth separating what has now gone wrong, because the responses differ.
In Boston, the vendor’s sharing switch was on when the contract said it would be off, for the first three days of the city’s 2025 pilot. That is a vendor failure. The city’s response was to stop using Flock. We covered the surveillance report in Flock shared Boston’s license plate data for three days.
In Braintree, Revere and New Bedford, individual officers are accused of using the systems to track former partners. That is a user failure, and the response is discipline, criminal charges and better anomaly detection. We covered those cases in a Braintree detective ran his ex’s plate 1,049 times.
Holyoke is neither. Nothing malfunctioned and nobody misused anything. The system worked exactly as configured, and the configuration was one nobody in the department had examined. That is a governance failure, and the fix is not a better switch or a better officer. It is somebody reading the settings and the logs, on a schedule, with authority to change them.
What a resident or a councilor can actually do
The Holyoke records came out through a public records request under G.L. c. 66, § 10, filed with the department. Flock audit logs are municipal records. Any resident of any community with these cameras can request the audit for their own town, and the request costs nothing to make.
Three questions produce most of the answer. Is nationwide sharing enabled, and if it is limited, to which states. How many outside queries were run against the town’s data in the last month. And what justifications were entered, since that free-text field is where “immigration” and “I.C.E.” appeared in Holyoke’s.
Holyoke’s City Council has referred an order reviewing the city’s use of plate readers to its public safety committee, which was scheduled to take it up Monday with Chief Keenan. Ward 3 Councilor Anne Thalheimer, who chairs that committee, called the immigration-related queries a concern that infringes on people’s rights and on “who we feel we are as a community.”
Springfield already limits sharing to New England and New York. Easthampton and Boston have left Flock entirely. Our running list of Massachusetts communities that have dropped the cameras is here.
Common questions
Did ICE search Holyoke’s license plate data?
Not directly. Flock says it does not share data with ICE. Outside police departments, some with ICE agreements or officers deputized for civil immigration enforcement, ran the searches and entered immigration-related justifications.
How many searches were there?
More than 1,500 with an immigration-related justification from January through August 2026, several hundred naming ICE. Outside departments queried Holyoke’s data nearly 300,000 times in August alone.
Can Massachusetts police enforce civil immigration law?
No. Under Lunn v. Commonwealth, 477 Mass. 517 (2017), Massachusetts officers have no authority to hold a person solely on a federal civil immigration detainer, and the Legislature has not created one.
Is the sharing illegal?
No Massachusetts statute governs license plate reader data sharing. H.3755 would have set rules but died in Ways and Means. The practice is a policy choice made by each department.
How can I see my own town’s audit?
File a public records request under G.L. c. 66, § 10 with the police department for the Flock audit log. Ask whether nationwide sharing is enabled, how many outside queries were run, and what justifications were entered.
Audit figures, the Florida Fish and Wildlife search, and quotations from Chief Brian Keenan, ACLU policy counsel Gideon Epstein and Councilor Anne Thalheimer are from MassLive and The Republican (Greta Jochem), September 18, 2026, based on Flock audit records obtained by public records request. This publication has not independently reviewed those audit records. Flock Safety’s position that it does not share data with ICE is stated on the company’s website. Lunn v. Commonwealth, 477 Mass. 517 (2017), verified against CourtListener. General information about Massachusetts law, not legal advice.