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Surveillance of Immigrants
Since the Trump administration took office, the United States has been seeing a crackdown on immigrants in the country. Immigration authorities like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) have been questioning, detaining, and deporting undocumented immigrants, student visa holders, and green card holders.
To aid in this crackdown, the administration is directing non-immigration-related government agencies like the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Medicaid to share sensitive information with immigration authorities. At an American Community Media briefing on September 5, data privacy and policy experts said this development sets a dangerous precedent.
Digital Watchtower
Nicole Alvarez, Senior Policy Analyst for Technology Policy at the Center for American Progress (CAP), calls the administration’s use of sensitive records for immigration enforcement a ‘digital watchtower.’ In a report published last month, Alvarez describes how the administration is creating the infrastructure for a rapidly expanding system of surveillance, which threatens both immigrants and citizens.
She explained that the Privacy Act of 1974, introduced after the Watergate scandal, was passed to ensure the federal government could only use an individual’s private information for the purpose for which it was collected.
However, the Privacy Act “has simply not kept up with the times,” said Alvarez. “It was written before the internet existed, before mass data storage, and before agencies could link massive databases. So today, the law offers very limited accountability when data is reused, when data is repurposed, or when it’s shared across agencies in ways that we never expected.”
The administration’s use of sensitive information for purposes other than its original objective — such as IRS or Medicaid data being used for immigration raids — can be termed secondary data abuse. A 2022 report by the Center for Privacy and Technology at Georgetown Law revealed that ICE also has access to personal information through the DMV’s driver’s license records and utility providers’ client records.
Another effort that is underway is the consolidation of different agencies’ data into one centralized repository, making it easier for the federal government to surveil immigrants as well as citizens.
Over time, Alvarez believes that secondary data abuse and centralization of data will dissuade individuals from enrolling or opting into the services offered by government agencies; immigrants might be hesitant to pay taxes, enroll in healthcare programs, or seek any other benefits that they are entitled to.
“When people disengage from public systems, those systems inherently become weaker; they become more unfair and less democratic,” said Alvarez. “It becomes harder for agencies to serve communities effectively, and ironically, it undermines long-term goals like fraud prevention and civic participation.”
Profiling Immigrants Through DNA
Emerald Tse, from the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown Law, echoed the findings of Alvarez’s report about the government’s digital watchtower and added that the surveillance is not limited to data collected through federal agencies.
The Center’s 2024 report Raiding The Genome provides a detailed analysis of a DHS program to collect DNA samples from thousands of people every day. In 2020, during the first Trump presidency, a Department of Justice rule gave DHS the power to collect the DNA sample of any individual they detain. These DNA samples are then used to create profiles that are added to a federal policing database that all levels of law enforcement can access.
“We found that the federal government has been collecting DNA on the assumption that people will commit crimes in the future,” said Tse, “that profiles were added regardless of whether a person committed a crime or had been charged with the crime, and that they had been added regardless of the person’s age.”
The report found that the DHS has added more than 2.5 million profiles to the national policing database through this program, and a 5000% rise in the number of profiles added over the past three years. These include children, teenagers, and elderly people, including at least one four-year-old. The report states that the “government is exploiting its immigration powers to collect genetic material at a pace that would not be possible using criminal policing powers.”
Social Media Dragnet
The current administration is leveraging social media to screen and, in some cases, target immigrants. Earlier this year, student visa interviews were put on hold for three weeks. When they resumed, consular officers were directed to vet applicants based on their social media profiles and online presence. The directive instructed officers to screen candidates who demonstrate support for Hamas, or “a history of political activism”. The government also announced it is using an AI-based application “Catch and Revoke” to scour social media profiles of thousands of international students and revoke their visas if their sympathies lie with Hamas.
Sophia Cope, Senior Staff Attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, views this social media surveillance as a direct challenge to individuals’ First Amendment rights. Another worrying trend, she said, is that the government is increasing the limitations on what immigrants can say on their social media.
“First it was pro-terrorism and sort of pro-Palestine [content on social media], then it’s anti-semitism, and then it’s even gotten as broad as a general hostility toward American values and American culture,” said Cope, “which is ridiculous, because all of that speech — frankly, even pro-terrorism speech — is protected under the First Amendment, as long as you’re not engaging in speech that is meant to incite imminent violence.”
This article was written with support from the American Community Media Fellowship Program.
