Protecting Privacy at the Southern Border: Fighting Back Against Data-Driven Deportation

-- By SamuelPittman - 25 Oct 2024

The Perfect Storm

Immigration is one of the most contentious issues in the upcoming Presidential Election. Today, about six in ten voters consider immigration critical to their voting calculus. Moreover, the case challenging the legality of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) is currently under review by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Fifth Circuit serves Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi and is arguably the most right-wing federal appellate court in the country. Although only serving three states, the Fifth Circuit has decided several cases involving issues such as: restricting the use and availability of mifepristone, whether perpetrators of domestic violence should be allowed to possess a firearm, and now is likely to strike down the legality of DACA.

Today, there are approximately 530,000 active DACA holders. However, there are about 3.6 million noncitizens residing in the United States who did not apply for DACA or aged into the program only after it stopped accepting new applicants.

Thus, the legal uncertainty surrounding DACA, the upcoming 2024 U.S. Presidential Election, and the inability of Congress to legislate creates the perfect storm for policy surrounding immigration to be decided, shaped, and influenced by federal courts and the executive branch. United States immigration policy will undoubtedly be influenced by the results of our Presidential Election in 11 days.

A Price Tag to Privacy: $960 Billion to $100 Billion

Former President Trump has placed a spotlight on immigration, making the top priority of his Agenda 47: “Seal the border and stop the migrant invasion.”

Inside the sixteen-page RNC Platform, Former President Trump promises: “Republicans will secure the Border” and “deport Illegal Aliens.” As an enforcement mechanism, the former President vowed to “begin the largest deportation program in American history.”

However, nowhere in his platform is the cost of pursuing mass deportations. In 2016, ICE released the average cost of transporting one deportee to their home country at $1,978. According to the American Immigration Council, if one million undocumented immigrants are deported per year, mass deportation would cost more than $960 billion over a decade.

Laying underneath the surface of a mass deportation effort is the role of surveillance and technology.

With the reality of a mass deportation-oriented immigration policy in the United States: questions surrounding surveillance, privacy, racial profiling, and due process become critical to examine. Yet, the role of the lawyer in defending vulnerable immigrant communities from surveillance becomes just as critical.

Examining the Intersection: Law, Politics, and Technology

The surveillance of noncitizens who enter this country without admission provides a unique opportunity to examine a fundamental intersection in the context of Law and the Internet Society: law, technology, and politics.

A study conducted by Boundless reported that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spies on a majority of Americans. In partnership with the Georgetown Law Center on Privacy and Technology, the report observed that ICE has created a large-scale surveillance system that reaches into the lives of millions of individuals in the United States: both noncitizens and U.S. citizens alike.

ICE has driver’s license data for three out of 4 adults living in the United States. ICE has scanned at least one in three adults’ driver’s licenses with face recognition technology. ICE has sidestepped state laws that prohibited the State from sharing utility information with immigration enforcement authorities, by purchasing utility records through data brokers.

ICE has expanded the use of SmartLink? , a GPS-enabled smartphone app, using the app as a tracking mechanism and compelling use of the app. SmartLink? is engineered by BI Inc., a subsidiary of the private prison company GEO Group.

ICE purchases consumer records from utility companies to locate people for deportation by contracting with Thomas Reuters. ICE interviews unaccompanied children to find and arrest their family members.

By contracting with third-party data brokers, ICE has now purchased the personal data of millions of American citizens. The threat of harm to undocumented communities across the country is increasing.

Congress's political inaction, expanding technological capabilities, and federal agency overreach are eroding privacy: secrecy, anonymity, and autonomy.

Never Far From Danger: Defending the Poultry Capital of the World

The objective of a lawyer concerned about protecting the livelihood and privacy of immigrant communities under a second Trump presidency is best served through specificity.

Georgia has the fifth-largest number of people in ICE detention. Georgia is also the world’s largest processed poultry producer. Gainesville, Georgia is known as the Poultry Capital of the World and is home to poultry farms and plants.

In 2019, amid rumors of an imminent ICE raid on poultry plants, poultry workers fled Gainesville plants. Some people resorted to running through the woods to return home.

The intersection of law, politics, and technology has life-altering consequences for immigrant communities – placing those who are in America, trying their best to earn an honest living – at risk.

Freeze to Death and ICE Will Find You – Is Freedom Possible?

Parasitic surveillance software further exacerbates already tragic circumstances. The internet society we live in already has achieved a total state of surveillance. Now, parasitic software is being weaponized to pursue an end goal of swift, mass deportation. It also has emboldened ICE to act upon the data they obtain through third-party contracts, placing immigrant workers in a constant state of fear of retaliation.

In 2021, two Gainesville poultry workers who were performing maintenance on the freezer died from asphyxiation and four more were killed as they tried to rescue their colleagues.

ICE had to be instructed to stay away from this tragedy. The National Council for Occupational Safety and Health (National COSH) demanded that ICE have no role whatsoever during the investigation of the 2021 chemical disaster.

In the face of death, threat of retaliation, Congressional inaction, and federal agency possession of data of millions of citizens and non-citizens alike: is freedom possible?

Fighting back against data-driven deportations and the consequent challenges ahead require me to return home.

I think the best route to improvement is tighter focus. The first two sections can be very tightly compressed. The discussion of ICE data-gathering on Americans should be more comprehensive: it should try to link all the available studies and journalists' reports that give specifics. The reader should feel that your piece condenses the best information available as of the election. That would be very valuable work.