No Privacy in Private: Immigrant Domestic Workers Are Being Recorded On the Job

Felicia, a 51-year-old nanny, is certain she’s being secretly recorded. 

When she returns to her employers’ New York home after a trip around town with their toddler, the parents bring up something she spoke about while at the playground. And when she takes another family’s preschooler to a playdate on a different day, these same concerns remain. The other parents also bring up something she talked about earlier. 

“Sometimes it happens right as you get in [to the home],” says Felicia. “So it’s not like a child will have enough time to go and say something to the parents.”

She’s not alone in her suspicions.

“When I speak about it, surprisingly, there are so many nannies that have experienced the same,” says Felicia. “This has been something that’s very common now. We know what’s going on.”

An immigrant from Saint Lucia, Felicia came to the United States over 20 years ago. Two years after settling into life in the U.S., Felicia’s cousin, also a nanny, suggested Felicia try her hand at nannying — and began recommending her to different families. She has worked as a nanny for families in New York and New Jersey. 

Now, Felicia lives with her mother, sisters, and two sons — the younger of whom was one year old when she started nannying. It’s a lot of childcare to juggle, both at work and at home. “I take care of their babies and come home and take care of mine,” she says.

In 2020, she became certified as a newborn care specialist, helping new parents navigate infant care. Felicia’s mother, who’s in the same profession, recommended the specialization. 

Felicia is still in touch with the first families that hired her. She took care of one family’s triplets and another’s twins when they were just toddlers; those kids are now in college. 

In recent years, Felicia has had to hone a new skill: how to spot when she’s being watched. “The cameras are basically everywhere,” she says. “I can walk into a room and I can tell you about certain cameras.” 

It’s common to find them in living rooms, kitchens, and play areas of her employers’ homes, Felicia says. She’s discovered cameras in wine toppers, pens, and Christmas ornaments. She even found one in the bathroom of a home in Brooklyn, New York. 

“It makes me feel like [they] don’t trust me,” Felicia says. She thinks cameras are unnecessary for most parents, especially ones that work from home in the next room or just down the hall. “If you don’t trust a nanny, you should not have a nanny work with you.” 

Privacy Concerns in the Workplace

As a nanny, Felicia falls under the umbrella of domestic workers — a broad group that also includes house cleaners, home health aides, and caregivers. For these workers, tolerating increased surveillance in the workplace is becoming increasingly familiar. About half of U.S. households have at least one security camera inside the home, according to 2025 data. About 75% of U.S. parents use nanny cams. Many install them for “peace of mind,” using them to monitor pets or children, or to record potential break-ins. 

For some, tools like Ring cameras — one of the most popular smart-home brands — help them feel more in control of their home and property. But for domestic workers, Ring cameras are a constant observer in their employers’ homes, scanning their faces and recording their words and actions.

Domestic work is disproportionately done by Black and brown immigrant women like Felicia. Immigrant domestic workers are subjected to surveillance by both federal immigration agencies and local governments. 

Under federal and state laws, those working in sensitive positions, like caring for children and the elderly, must provide their fingerprints — often to private companies contracted with state or local law enforcement agencies. Those companies can share these fingerprints with federal immigration agencies. According to the American Immigration Council, a nonprofit promoting immigrants’ rights, states are also required to share immigrants’ biometric data with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). 

Jennifer Lynch is General Counsel with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a nonprofit organization advocating for data privacy. “[Sharing fingerprint data with DHS] is subjecting undocumented and even documented immigrants in the United States to heightened fears of deportation should they have any interaction with law enforcement,” she writes in a report with the American Immigration Council.

A Legacy of Being Watched 

Throughout U.S. history, Black women have performed domestic work for white families. Enslaved Black women cared for enslavers’ children, conducted demanding household chores, and were intimately involved in domestic matters. Post-Emancipation, freed Black housekeepers worked long hours for low pay. In the 20th century, immigrant women from Latin America, Asia, and Africa joined the industry. 

Surveillance of these workers is not new. Enslaved people in the U.S. — including those performing domestic labor — were subject to lantern laws: to leave their enslavers’ homes, they had to carry lanterns to enable the white ruling class to surveil their movements. 

Today, Black and brown women — many of them immigrants — are encountering new forms of surveillance. 

“Inside employers’ homes, immigrant domestic workers often face a level of surveillance most people would never tolerate at work,” says Wilneida Negrón, a technologist and policy strategist. “[These include] hidden nanny cams, smart doorbells, Ring cameras, baby monitors, and voice-activated devices that record audio around the clock.”

Unique Vulnerabilities for Immigrant Domestic Workers

Technology on its own is not inherently dangerous. In fact, some domestic workers think of video surveillance — without audio recording — as an asset. In an industry where wage theft and harassment are rampant, some immigrant domestic workers are reassured by the knowledge that the hours they work inside someone’s home or allegations of wrongdoing may be reviewed in video footage. 

“I don’t have an issue with you [recording] a video because, if something happens, there’s backup proof,” says Angella Foster, a former nanny from Jamaica who worked in Boston. “Some kids will hit you or do things to you and they will lie ’cause kids lie. So you’ll have that backup. You’ll have your camera to prove [it].”

But it’s not just actions in the workplace that are being recorded. Employers collect all sorts of personal and private information about the domestic workers they hire.

“Beyond biometrics, domestic workers are increasingly tracked and documented through payroll apps, background checks, and home cameras,” says Negrón. “[These] collect everything from their address and ID numbers to GPS location and private conversations.” 

Negrón says that exposure makes immigrant workers particularly vulnerable to anyone who can obtain that private data.

“Because these systems sit at the intersection of work, home, and immigration enforcement, any leak or data-sharing deal doesn’t just threaten [domestic workers’] privacy; it can directly endanger their job, housing, and ability to stay in the country.”

In a 2025 research paper about domestic workers’ attitudes toward surveillance, one nanny says she will often not bring up concerns about cameras if she’s more desperate to get a job. 

Felicia says she and other nannies she knows have experienced fears of retaliation if they speak up. “Employers have access to our personal information through contracts and work agreements. That information can be misused,” she adds. “Your photos or personal details could be shared with immigration authorities.”

In a 2019 essay for the New York Times, Angella Foster wrote about her experience of being surveilled in an employer’s home without her consent. An undocumented immigrant at the time, Foster wrote about the “deep betrayal” she felt when she learned that cameras in the home captured not only video footage, but audio recordings, too. She felt that crossed a line. In the essay, Foster remembers having had phone conversations about her immigration status or family relations in front of those cameras — yet she was unaware the sensitive content of those calls had been recorded the entire time.

For immigrant domestic workers who are undocumented, the idea that law enforcement could be watching them is especially threatening — particularly because of the ways police have been assisting federal agencies like ICE. 

“Especially with what’s going on right now with ICE, nannies now have the fear that their face is showing on the camera,” says Felicia. “[The families] know [our] address, where [we] live, because most nannies work on a contract. If I decide I don’t want to work with this family anymore for whatever reason…would [they] take my information and bring it out there?”

Feet in 2 Worlds reported on the ways police work with federal immigration enforcement in the first story of our series, Surveilled and Sold.

Concerns like Felicia’s are rising among her colleagues. Daniela Perez is the Media Relations Director at the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA), a nonprofit organization advocating for domestic workers’ rights. Perez says she’s heard recent reports of employers threatening to report their employees to ICE when domestic workers raise concerns about their wages or professional treatment. Felicia has heard the same among her nanny friends in New York.

With increased surveillance come more opportunities to harvest people’s personal data. And one prominent company in particular demonstrates a willingness to collaborate with federal immigration enforcement efforts. 

As of 2023, an estimated 10 million Americans use Ring cameras in and outside their homes. Amazon, Ring’s parent company, has ties with federal immigration agencies like DHS and ICE. Reports from 2022 show that law enforcement has routinely obtained footage from cameras like the ones in Felicia’s employers’ homes without warrants — sometimes without the knowledge or consent of the camera owners.

Ring and the Police

Ring also has a longstanding relationship with police. The company advertises a feature within its app called the Neighbors Public Safety Service as a way to foster collaboration between law enforcement, fire departments, and camera users to enhance community safety, according to Ring. Another service called Community Requests allows police agencies to request footage from cameras in a specific area after someone reports a crime. If a camera owner accepts the police request, their footage can be shared with the requesting police agency.

Correction: In an earlier version of this story, Feet in 2 Worlds stated that if a Ring camera owner accepts a police request, their footage can be shared with the requesting police agency and others in the Neighbors network.

Ring reached out to Fi2W stating that if a customer responds to a request, the footage is solely shared with the requesting agency.

In New Jersey and New York City, where Felicia works, Neighbors is particularly active. 191 police agencies in New Jersey and 135 police agencies in New York participate in Neighbors. Ring has offered the feature to over 2,700 local law enforcement agencies across the country in recent years.

This partnership has been mutually beneficial for both Ring and police: in 2016, the EFF reported that U.S. cities were paying Ring up to $100,000 in matching funds to make cameras cheaper for city residents. City governments were also promoting Ring at city events, bringing in more revenue for the company. In 2019, Motherboard reported that each time a resident downloaded the Neighbors app, local police departments would earn credits from Amazon toward buying cameras they could give to residents. In return, Amazon’s willingness to hand over footage without a warrant makes police work easier. Update: Ring claims that these practices have been discontinued.

Law enforcement can obtain a camera’s footage without the camera owner’s knowledge or consent. This is because Ring footage is stored in the cloud and not within the device itself, so a search request can be served to Amazon directly instead of the camera owner. Ring’s law enforcement guidelines say it will not disclose Ring video to police absent a warrant from a judge or consent from the resident — and does not disclose user information along with video footage. According to Ring’s bi-annual Information Request Reports, the company processed a total of 10,684 information requests from law enforcement and government agencies in 2025. But from those, the company notified only 12% of camera users about those information requests. Update: Ring’s bi-annual reports can be viewed on its Law Enforcement Information Requests page.

In a statement to Feet in 2 Worlds, a Ring spokesperson said: “Ring does not disclose customer information unless required to do so by law, or in rare emergency situations when there is an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury. Ring’s Community Requests feature is a separate and completely voluntary tool that enables local public safety agencies to publicly post requests for videos from Ring camera owners within a designated area to support a specific investigation. Customers always choose whether to respond to a Community Request and what they share.”

Ring says it has a legal team that reviews all law enforcement requests. But privacy experts argue that Ring’s legal team members are not judges and that Ring is not equipped to make those judgments.

“Ring, which is an unelected private company with a profit motive, gets to be the people who decide whether or not the police request is in good faith or not,” says Matthew Guariglia, a senior policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. In an article by Consumer Reports, Guariglia goes on to explain there is no process for a judge or device owner to determine whether there actually was an emergency for exigent requests (i.e. in cases presenting imminent threat of death or serious injury to someone).

Ring markets its cameras to consumers as a safety precaution. But because law enforcement can obtain footage without the user’s knowledge, these cameras can actually jeopardize their owners’ privacy — and potentially, the privacy of immigrant domestic workers who are present in the home.

Advocating for Legal Protections

Domestic workers have faced particular challenges when it comes to advocating for labor protections. Historically, legal exclusions targeting domestic workers made unionizing near-impossible. Today, unlike much of the U.S. workforce, domestic workers are not protected under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) or the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA).

They may also find it difficult to unite to share grievances and organize against workplace retaliation or exploitation. Due to the nature of their jobs, many work in isolation in their employers’ homes. Working for individual families — instead of corporations — complicates the potential for nationwide collective bargaining agreements. In lieu of a union, grassroots organizations have worked hard over the past decade to provide alternative spaces for workers to gather, plan, and advocate for their rights.

Angella Foster, who wrote the New York Times essay on her experience with nanny cams, was part of one such organization. Foster lived in Boston for almost 30 years before moving back to Jamaica after the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Before she left, Foster helped secure worker protections for her community through her advocacy at the Matahari Women Workers’ Center, an organization representing women workers in the domestic and service industries in Massachusetts. 

In 2014, Foster was also part of an organizing effort to pass the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights in Massachusetts. 

According to the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA), a domestic workers bill of rights is a law that “guarantees basic labor rights and protections for domestic workers” at the state or city level. 

In Massachusetts, the law secures rights to the same minimum wage and overtime standards as other workers in the state. It also lays out specific rules regarding rest time and living conditions for live-in domestic workers. 

“When that was signed into law by [former Massachusetts Governor] Deval Patrick, we were ecstatic,” Foster says. “Because finally, domestic workers were being validated. They were seen for their value. Because we make all other jobs possible.”

In other states, the bill of rights’ protections can cover minimum wage and overtime protections, paid sick leave, rest breaks, and anti-discrimination, retaliation, and harassment protections. 

New York became the first state to enact these protections in 2010. Currently, 12 states, two cities, and the District of Columbia have adopted similar laws. 

Daniela Perez, Media Relations Director of the NDWA, is an advocate for a National Domestic Workers Bill of Rights. Federal protections would impact the lives of around 2.2 million domestic workers nationwide.

“[The Domestic Workers Bill of Rights] is necessary because domestic work happens in the confines of people’s homes,” says Perez. “There’s no such thing as an HR department. [Domestic workers] don’t have water coolers to be able to talk about whether or not their rights are being violated. Many of them are unaware of the fact that they even have rights depending on the states that they’re in because of the isolated nature of their work.”

Surveillance Technologies Outpace Policy

Current versions of the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights do not contain language explicitly protecting workers against surveillance in the workplace. 

Among the 12 states with protections, only two states’ laws contain broad privacy protections. Massachusetts’ law, for instance, makes it illegal for employers to monitor domestic workers’ private communications, such as phone calls or text messages. For live-in caregivers, the law also requires clearly written terms delineating if or how employers will enter their employee’s living space within the home.

In Virginia, the law contains broad privacy protections for live-in domestic workers, prohibiting cameras in the living quarters where workers sleep or go to the bathroom.

Yet the weaponization of smart home technologies and exploitation of personal data has far outpaced the tremendous time and effort it takes for legislation to be proposed, drafted, discussed, and codified.

In the second story of our series Surveilled and Sold, Feet in 2 Worlds reported on Montana’s new data privacy law and whether other states and local governments can pass similar legislation.

“[The language] is very limited and I think, partly, it’s because of how challenging it is to pass these bills,” Perez says. “For example, we just passed the Washington Domestic Worker Bill of Rights, but this was after a third attempt of trying to pass it.”

Perez says the time and compromise involved in the legislative process often means sacrificing certain proposed protections.

“It is likely that in the initial drafts of these bills, surveillance is included,” says Perez. “But due to the bureaucracy of everything, it’s probably cut out because there are multiple lobbies that happen to be against domestic workers.” 

Advocates continue to emphasize community education as key to keeping workers safe.

“No matter what, our government is always going to be slower in policy-making for protection than the constant changes in technology that move really fast,” says Marchel Kaleikini. Kaleikini is the political director of For All Families Oregon (FAFO), an organization of parents and caregivers advocating for economic justice for child care providers. “That’s where community care and community organizing really comes into play because the government is not going to save us or protect us,” she says.

Perez adds that future legislation has the potential to include wider protections against intrusive surveillance technologies in the workplace. “We’re establishing the baseline and, from then on, we can continue to organize more,” she says.

Apart from pushing legislation, leaders like Kaleikini, Perez, and Foster continue to organize in different ways.

In 2014, another nanny invited Angella Foster to a Know Your Rights workshop for nannies at the Matahari Women Workers’ Center. These workshops inform people of their constitutional rights when interacting with law enforcement and federal immigration enforcement agents. There, Foster recalls suddenly feeling seen. Due to the isolating nature of her work, she says it was refreshing to see over a hundred domestic workers in one room sharing their experiences with each other.

Matahari later launched a survey called the Nanny Cam Campaign, where over 100 nannies were asked about their knowledge of their rights as domestic workers and their feelings about workplace surveillance. By that point, Foster had joined Matahari as a Know Your Rights educator.

“For the most part, [they] did not know that their voices were being recorded,” Foster recalls. “They did not know that [employers] could have [recorders] in the stroller. The apps that they asked you to download on your phone is [the employer’s] way of surveilling you — even on the weekends you are being surveilled.”

63% of nannies surveyed did not know if or how their employers record their voices. Less than half were aware of their privacy rights regarding the illegality of recording audio without a nanny’s knowledge or consent in Massachusetts.

Many organizers are still figuring out how these technologies work in tandem with immigration enforcement. Workshops have yet to touch upon the ways these systems can fuel detentions or deportations. For Perez, the weaponization of surveillance technologies against immigrant workers is both sinister and expected.  

“I wish I could say I’m surprised, but I’m not. I think what worries me is the lack of guardrails as this technology begins to evolve and the lack of transparency,” Perez says. “Unfortunately, immigrant workers are going to be caught in the crossroads of what is considered a threat, and that’s concerning to me.”

The fear of constantly being watched and potentially being detained has been pushing Felicia toward leaving the nanny profession entirely. 

In the past year, she says she has experienced an increasing lack of respect from her employers. Other immigrant nannies tell her stories of parents threatening to expose their immigration statuses. Many, including Felicia, say they are afraid to bring children to public parks for fear of being profiled and detained by ICE. 

“We nannies love to be able to take kids out there and feel comfortable,” Felicia says. “But now, we are fearful to even be out there in the parks. This is one of the reasons why I want to slowly transition from being a nanny to being a full-time newborn care specialist.”

Still, she hesitates when she thinks about leaving her nannying days behind.

“I love what I do. When I see [the children’s] happiness, that brings so much joy to my heart,” she says. “It’s very hard. This situation has affected nannies on so many levels.”

Feet in 2 Worlds is supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Ford Foundation, the Fernandez Pave the Way Foundation, the Elizabeth Bond Davis Foundation, an anonymous donor, and contributors to our annual NewsMatch campaign.