Elgin Community College Covered Flock Cameras With Trash Bags After Refusing to Let the Company Remove Them

When Elgin Community College hired Flock Safety in April 2025 to install six automatic license plate reader cameras, President Peggy Heinrich believed the technology would enhance campus safety. The cameras use artificial intelligence to track the registration, model, and distinguishing details of every passing vehicle, including dents and bumper stickers. They were intended to help locate stolen cars and missing people.

That belief changed quickly.

Heinrich began questioning whether the cameras were actually making students less safe after news reports surfaced that data captured by Flock cameras in Illinois had been shared with U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The concern became urgent in September 2025, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained an Elgin Community College student in a campus parking lot.

More than half of students at the far west suburban Chicago campus identify as Latino. Heinrich said enrollment dipped after the detention. Students were afraid to come to class.

"We're just doing everything we can here to be sure this feels like a safe place for our students to come," Heinrich said. "We want them to come here and to be able to focus on learning."

College staff notified Flock in October 2025 that they wanted to cancel their contract and have the cameras removed. Within a day, Flock rejected the request and refused to uninstall the equipment, citing that the college had not breached their agreement.

College officials reached out again in December 2025 and offered to pay for the remaining five months of the contract. They simply wanted the cameras taken down. Heinrich said she never received a response.

What happened next, by Heinrich's account, became a strange and public standoff. ECC staff began covering the cameras with black trash bags and zip ties so they could not capture footage. Workers in an unmarked vehicle, which Heinrich assumed belonged to Flock, repeatedly removed the coverings during service visits.

"We were kind of in a back and forth for a bit where we'd cover, and then when they'd come to service, they'd remove," Heinrich said. "Then we'd cover and then they'd remove."

The cycle continued until ECC's contract with Flock expired in April 2026, when the company finally uninstalled the cameras for good.

Public records obtained by surveillance researcher Torin Monahan and WBEZ show that data captured by Flock cameras at other Illinois public campuses, including Joliet Junior College, the University of Illinois Chicago, and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, was searched dozens of times last year in connection with immigration enforcement. In some cases, federal immigration authorities directly accessed the colleges' data. The Illinois Secretary of State found that U.S. Customs and Border Protection searched Illinois Flock data last year in violation of state law.

Heinrich said her staff audited ECC's Flock data and found no evidence to suggest it had been accessed by federal immigration agents. Still, college officials asked Flock to remove the surveillance cameras out of an abundance of caution.

Flock Safety did not respond to a request for comment. The company has publicly stated that federal agencies, including ICE, can no longer access local Flock data unless law enforcement agencies grant access.

Surveillance experts say Flock has a financial incentive to keep as many cameras gathering data as possible, even in locations that no longer want them. Potential clients evaluate the size and reach of a surveillance network when choosing a provider, according to Monahan, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

"You get to access even more cameras throughout the country," Monahan said.

Flock's license plate readers remain installed at several other Illinois campuses, including five of the state's 12 public universities and four community colleges. At Joliet Junior College, students must pass at least one of the school's seven Flock cameras to reach their classes. A third of Joliet Junior College students identify as Latino.

Lui Rodriguez, a 26-year-old student at Joliet Junior College, said he was shocked to learn the college contracts with Flock and that public records show federal immigration agents directly accessed data captured by the campus cameras last year.

"It's kind of like a backstab to the students," Rodriguez said. "I wish more people knew about it."

Katie Smith, a spokesperson for Joliet Junior College, said the college and its campus police proactively review who has access to Flock data and would take any misuse of that information seriously. The college's contract with Flock is up for renewal in July 2027.

"We are being surveilled and our information can be used to track us down and detain us," Rodriguez said. "That's not conducive to education and learning."

Students and educators across Illinois are calling on college leaders to terminate their contracts with Flock, arguing the surveillance technology violates student privacy and endangers immigrant students and student activists targeted by federal immigration enforcement.