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Flock has become the center of a nationwide controversy over its roughly 20 billion monthly license plate scans, which are accessible to immigration enforcement. Dozens of cities have canceled contracts. Protesters have targeted its Atlanta headquarters. Cameras have been physically destroyed across multiple states.
Asked about it in a June 2026 interview with venture capitalist Ian Hathaway on his podcast, Outsider Inc., CEO Garrett Langley's answer was that they "can't make that our problem as a company."
CEO Cites Local Choice
Flock's CEO did not defend, dispute, or distance the company from its use for immigration enforcement when asked about the contract cancellations. He dismissed it as somebody else's jurisdiction entirely:
I am like guys, the company has no opinion on this. If the state of Texas wants to enforce immigration, they might use Flock, but they're gonna go enforce immigration no matter what Flock does.
"They're gonna go enforce immigration no matter what Flock does" is the crux: a CEO arguing that, if the outcome is inevitable, his company's role in enabling it is irrelevant.
However, this was not inevitable. The current administration's immigration enforcement policies were the product of years of sustained political organizing by people who wanted it, fought for it, and shaped policy to get it. The same lever is available to those pushing the other way, which is precisely why cities keep canceling Flock contracts.
Langley's real message is simpler: leave me out of it. He then acknowledged his employees' discomfort directly and dismissed that too:
It's really tough for my employees to work at a company where they're like, 'I don't like that law, but our technology is used to enforce it.' But we can't make that our problem as a company. [emphasis added]
Langley does not disclose how many employees feel that way, and Flock has roughly 2,000 staff. Publicly putting the admission on record may compound the damage: it signals to current employees and to anyone considering joining that leadership knows about the discomfort and has ruled it out of scope. That kind of statement tends to accelerate the exits it describes.
For millions of Americans, what Flock's data helps make possible is not an abstraction. It reads as authoritarian tactics: raids at schools and churches, legal residents detained, and children left without parents. Flock's CEO saying it is not the company's problem does not change what those employees see when they go to work, or what a significant number of Americans are taking to the streets to protest.
The framing is a notable evolution. For much of the past year, Flock's public posture was closer to denial: federal agencies had no contract, no direct access, no special pathway in. The podcast statement breaks from that thread, acknowledging the use is happening and assigning responsibility entirely to the agencies carrying it out. That use flows primarily through local police, which run searches at federal request or through formal state-level agreements with ICE.
Texas and ICE Working Together
Texas has two overlapping agreements that bind local officers to work with ICE: the state Attorney General's 287(g) memorandum of agreement and Senate Bill 8.
The agreement formally binds ICE and the Texas AG's office to work together on immigration enforcement:
Texas officers in the program operate under ICE supervision and direction:
Both bind Texas officers to operate within ICE systems and transfer detainees to ICE custody, with Flock cameras in the middle of that chain, regardless of whether Flock holds a direct ICE contract.
Built to Share, Designed to Spread
Enforcement use flows directly from the platform's core architecture. Flock's national LPR network spans more than 5,000 communities, and 75% of its law enforcement customers participate in cross-state search tools, per a U.S. Senate disclosure. New agencies joining the network receive automatic sharing prompts, and the system is architected to grow sharing, not constrain it.
Local agencies choosing to share data with federal enforcement are doing exactly what Flock's platform incentivizes them to do. Langley's "not our problem" framing skips past the fact that Flock deliberately engineered the conditions that make the problem routine — designing for maximum sharing, maximum moat, and maximum network growth.
Chief Lawyer Contradictory Denial
The statement also contrasts starkly with Chief Legal Officer Dan Haley's recent public comments on the same subject. In a February 2026 podcast appearance, Haley stated flatly that "ICE does not have a contract with Flock" and that the company does not provide ICE with direct access to its cameras, characterizing the concerns as "misinformation peddled online by activists." Flock's communications team has pushed the same categorical line: spokesperson Holly Beilin told CBS News Atlanta, "There is misinformation out there that Flock works with ICE... and it's simply not true."
Haley went further still in a June 2026 appearance on The Jason Rantz Show, stating flatly: "We don't have anything to do with immigration enforcement." The two positions cannot both be accurate. Haley and the communications team deny that the connection exists. Langley, speaking in a less scripted venue, says the use is real, inevitable, and beside the point. The company does not appear to have settled on which answer it wants to give.
Messaging Flock Struggles to Keep Straight
The discordance between Flock's founder and Flock's chief attorney fits a broader pattern. Two Flock executives contradicted each other on video about whether the system tracks individuals. A Flock sales rep contradicted policy on record, telling an undercover caller the company had maintained partnerships with private investigators. Langley publicly guaranteed Flock would never sell data, a promise quietly deleted from contracts weeks after the guarantee was made.
Each statement is calibrated for the immediate audience and moment. The accumulated record does not hold together.
A More Hostile Future Awaits
The "we can't make that our problem" stance is calibrated for a specific political environment, one in which federal enforcement priorities are broadly shared with Flock's law enforcement customer base and the current administration provides political cover. That environment will not last indefinitely. A different administration or a differently composed Congress will find a company whose CEO went on record saying it bears no responsibility for how its platform is used. That is not a strong position from which to argue for the public trust.
The harder question Langley's statement leaves unanswered is what Flock does from here. Denial failed; the documented record contradicted it too many times. The shrug is already producing its own contradictions: Haley and the communications team are still publicly insisting the company has nothing to do with immigration enforcement, while the CEO concedes the opposite in a podcast.
There is no neutral position available to a company that drove the system, scaled the sharing, and collected the contracts. Flock created this situation. The CEO's shrug and the lawyer's denial are both attempts to extricate the company from a corner it has boxed itself into.