Why Jonathan Paz quit Flock comes down to an alleged gap between the company’s internal assurances about immigration enforcement and later disclosures that federal agencies had access to its license-plate-reader network. Paz, a former government-affairs manager at Flock, told 404 Media he resigned in July 2025 after concluding he had been misled about the company’s relationship with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Flock sells automated license plate readers, cameras that record vehicle plates and images at fixed locations. Police agencies can search the resulting records for vehicles of interest. Paz said he joined the company after working in activism, union organizing and as a city councilor in Waltham, Massachusetts, believing its technology could help find missing people and address crime.
His job involved appearing at public hearings as cities and towns weighed camera purchases, according to 404 Media. Paz said he was sent to places where opposition was strong and was expected to help win council approval. That work changed his view of the company, he said, when he saw his role as containing community resistance rather than reflecting it.
Why did Jonathan Paz quit Flock?
Paz said he repeatedly asked inside Flock whether the company worked with ICE, partly because he is the son of immigrants. The answer, he told 404 Media, was that Flock did not work with the agency. He later learned of efforts within the company to establish a pilot arrangement giving federal agencies access, he said.
404 Media reported that Flock initially denied federal agencies had direct access to its cameras, then acknowledged that Customs and Border Protection had such access through a pilot program, as did ICE. Separate reporting by the ACLU said Flock acknowledged pilot contracts with CBP and the Department of Homeland Security that provided direct access to license data after contrary information emerged.
Those reported arrangements corroborate the central factual context for Paz’s decision, though they do not independently establish what he was told in internal conversations. His description of those assurances, and his characterization that the company “lied,” are his account. The material reviewed contains no direct Flock response to Paz’s specific allegation.
Paz told 404 Media that he declined tens of thousands of dollars in company equity and a severance package when he left. He later started an organization intended to help people facing costs such as rent, food and legal fees amid the federal deportation campaign, and is running for Congress in Massachusetts’s 5th District.
Asked about the work of employees who help persuade communities to buy Flock cameras, a company spokesperson told 404 Media that discussions with communities had helped Flock improve product controls and refine its public-policy positions. The spokesperson added that each community decides for itself whether to adopt the technology.
That distinction is the uncomfortable bit for cities considering the system: Flock says adoption rests locally, while Paz’s account describes a sales and government-affairs operation built to influence those local votes.
This story draws on original reporting from 404 Media.
