ICE has created a large-scale system to track migrants: how it works
To understand how federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) use various tools to monitor migrants, a fact sheet NPR collected dozens of testimonies describing encounters with federal immigration officials in recent months.
One evening in late January, Emily was driving around her Minneapolis neighborhood, doing what had become her daily routine in recent weeks: monitoring Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity.
Emily (NPR is using only her first name because she fears federal prosecution) says she kept a safe distance and followed the ICE vehicle into the parking lot. "Then someone looked out the passenger window of this SUV and took a picture of me and my car," she says.
On the subject: ICE officers ignored dozens of court orders to release immigrants.
Emily said she then decided to leave, but the SUV abruptly turned and raced straight toward her, stopping at the driver's side window. A masked female agent rolled down the window and addressed Emily by name.
“She screamed, ‘Emily, Emily, we’re taking you home!’ Then she looked at her phone and told me my home address,” the girl recalls.
She didn't react to the agents' words and left, but was so shocked that she didn't go home, fearing they might follow her. Instead, she stopped at a nearby restaurant and sat there for several hours.
"I don't know how they got my information—if they had something on me beforehand, or if they just checked the car's registration," Emily said, perplexed. "Their message was very clear. They were basically saying, 'We see you. We can get to you whenever we want.' And that really scared me."
Emily's experience echoes many of the stories people are sharing across the country.
Activists and journalists have spoken of methods they consider threatening: agents taking photos of their faces or license plates, addressing them by name, or escorting them home. Immigration lawyers told NPR that their clients have been screened using facial recognition technology. One ICE agent, testifying under oath, described an app that displays the probable home addresses of people slated for deportation.
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), employs a wide array of surveillance tools. These were purchased through a significant budget increase under the current administration.
While other law enforcement agencies have access to similar technologies, ICE has become one of the leaders in their use, according to lawyers and privacy advocates.
Surveillance of observers
In Minnesota, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the administration, alleging it violates the First Amendment rights of protesters and observers like Emily. In the lawsuit, more than 30 people testified under oath, describing similar encounters with immigration agents.
In court filings, government lawyers argued that the federal agents' actions did not violate the Constitution.
The Department of Homeland Security said: "DHS does not disclose law enforcement methods or tactics."
In January, Colleen Fagan filmed federal agents conducting an immigration sting outside an apartment complex in Portland, Maine. The recording appears to show the agents filming her face and her license plate number with their phones. When she asked why they were recording her information, a masked agent can be heard responding, "Because we have a small database, and now you're considered a domestic terrorist."
Last month, Fagan joined a class action lawsuit alleging the administration is violating observers' rights.
At a congressional hearing last month, acting Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Todd Lyons denied the existence of a protest database.
However, federal immigration agents use the facial recognition app Mobile Fortify, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection recently contracted with Clearview AI, a facial recognition company with access to billions of facial images collected online.
Nathan Wesseler, deputy director of the ACLU's Speech Privacy and Technology Project, says it's not yet known how widely the technology is being used against protesters.
"One of the most disturbing aspects of this is that people simply don't understand what's happening," Wesseler noted. "No one should have to wonder whether they're being intimidated or whether their face is being biometrically scanned. In a society that should be free and open, such practices are unacceptable."
In a statement to NPR, DHS emphasized that Mobile Fortify, developed under the Trump administration, "does not use open-source materials, does not collect data from social media, and does not rely on publicly available information."
In cases where federal agents know the names and addresses of monitors, privacy advocates suggest that agents could check license plates to obtain data from state departments of motor vehicles (DMV) databases to find out who the car is registered to and where that person lives.
A south Minneapolis resident named Ell, who frequently observes ICE activity in her neighborhood, says immigration officials have referred to her by her wife's name, in whose name the car is registered.
"They would take out their phones and come right up to my car and take pictures of me... and my license plate, and they would also often come up to the car and knock on the window," Ell explains.
She then recounted how, in early January, she had followed immigration officials, who had led Elle directly to her home and stopped briefly outside. Later that day, her wife and neighbor told her that the officers had returned and were knocking on the front door.
One way ICE accesses state DMV data is through Nlets, a nonprofit that facilitates data sharing between law enforcement agencies. Late last year, a group of Democratic lawmakers called on Democratic governors to block ICE's access to this data through Nlets.
Several states have already taken this step, but as Emily Tucker, executive director of the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown University Law School, notes, "There are many ways DHS could obtain this data. If states block access through Nlets, they could turn to data brokers like Thomson Reuters or Lexis Nexis."
Last May, ICE spent $5 million on a subscription to Thomson Reuters, which sells data to government and private organizations to obtain what ICE documents call "license plate reader data."
Over the past year, the Trump administration has been implementing an unprecedented project to consolidate Americans' personal data and expand ICE's access to this information. A data-sharing agreement with the Department of Health and Human Services provides ICE with the names, dates of birth, and home addresses of unlawful immigrants contained in the Medicaid program database. ICE also entered into an agreement with the Internal Revenue Service, but last week a federal judge ruled that the Internal Revenue Service violated federal tax law by sharing address data on more than 42,000 individuals with ICE.
This complements the extensive data collection system that ICE actively expanded during Trump's first term. As of 2022, ICE was able to locate three out of four American adults using utility records, and had analyzed driver's license photos of one in three Americans, according to a study by the Center for Privacy and Technology at Georgetown University Law School.
Furthermore, the use of automatic license plate reader systems has increased dramatically across the country in recent years. These systems allow law enforcement agencies to tap into a vast network of cameras and track the movements of specific vehicles. DHS officers have direct access to some of these networks, while others are accessed through partnerships with local law enforcement.
ICE also has tools that enable location tracking using cellphone data. On March 10, a group of more than 70 Democratic members of Congress sent a letter to the DHS Office of Inspector General asking for an investigation into the use of this technology without a warrant.
Immigrant surveillance
Olga Fedorova is a freelance photojournalist who worked in Minneapolis during the most violent immigration crackdowns earlier this year. She frequently followed federal agents around the city and repeatedly witnessed them scanning the faces of people they stopped.
"They took the phone, pointed it at the person, and you could see that their face was literally being scanned. It took up the entire screen, and it looked like it was being processed," Fedorova explained.
Apparently, they used the Mobile Fortify app. One DHS document states that it uses "CBP facial comparison or DHS fingerprint matching to quickly verify persons of interest during operations."
According to Fedorova, every time she saw the program being used, the person stopped looked like they were from Latin America.
She once photographed a man who was stopped in a car by agents who had his face scanned. The man showed the agents some kind of document, but they still detained him.
“His car was simply left on the street,” Olga continued.
Lawyers NPR spoke with described clients whose faces were scanned using Mobile Fortify and who were taken into custody even though the app couldn't identify them. Steven Manning, an immigration attorney and executive director of the Innovation Law Lab in Portland, represented a farmworker detained after ICE agents stopped the van she was traveling in.
"It was tested through Mobile Fortify and both times the results were incorrect," Manning said.
At the hearing for this worker, an ICE agent identified only by the initials JB described another app called ELITE, created by Palantir. He compared it to Google Maps and explained that the program displays the locations of people who may be subject to deportation, as well as the likelihood that they live at the address listed.
According to JB, the app is used as a source of "tips" when choosing a location for an operation.
Another ICE agent, identified only by the initials DR, described how agents use license plate data to find people slated for deportation.
DR reported that when agents arrived at an apartment complex in Woodburn, Oregon, in October, they began checking license plates to try to link the vehicle to a potential target.
According to a DHS document, ICE began using the ELITE app in June. It is an artificial intelligence-based technology.
The app uses data from DHS information systems, as well as new information obtained by ICE from other agencies, such as home addresses from Medicaid data. Palantir's blog states that this is "limited information shared by other agencies under a data-sharing agreement for use in immigration enforcement."
Independent publication 404 Media was the first to report on the app's existence and received a user manual.
"They're using data and combining it in a way that would normally require a court order," Manning emphasized. "From a legal perspective, it's very troubling because they're using technology to circumvent the Fourth Amendment."
Internet surveillance
DHS's surveillance system also extends to social media. NPR spoke with two people with hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers. They said their Global Entry status was revoked after posting messages critical of ICE. The direct connection between these events and their posts remains unclear.
Much more obvious is the government's use of so-called administrative subpoenas. These are issued to tech companies like Google or Meta, demanding they disclose personal data to identify the owners of anonymous accounts. Such subpoenas (which federal agencies can issue without a court order or a grand jury) were typically used in cases involving serious crimes, such as child sexual abuse materials. Now, according to human rights and privacy experts, they are being used to suppress free speech.
"We're seeing a growing trend, but I think this is just the tip of the iceberg," said Steve Lowney, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, who has represented several people whose internet data has been sought in this way.
According to him, a certain pattern has emerged in recent months.
"It seems that as soon as people start openly criticising what's happening in the area of immigration control, they receive a letter from their social network saying that the government has requested their data," he concluded.
Sherman Austin, 42, of Long Beach, California, received such a letter last September from Meta, the company that owns Instagram and Facebook.
“At first I thought it was some kind of scam or a phishing email,” he began his story.
The letter stated that law enforcement agencies were requesting information about his Instagram account.
"We may be forced to respond to this legal request in less than ten days if we have reasonable grounds to believe that we are obligated to do so," the letter said.
In response to a request for comment on the subpoenas, Meta directed NPR to a page explaining how the company handles government data requests.
Austin runs the account @stopicenet, where he regularly posts information about ICE activities and collaborates with other users who do the same. A few days before receiving the letter from Meta, he posted a message identifying an ICE agent working in California using only publicly available information, specifically the name on a badge visible in a photograph taken in public.
After corresponding with Meta, Austin was able to obtain a heavily redacted copy of the administrative subpoena from DHS. It listed the reason for the request as "employee safety/doxing."
"I found it funny: how can you reveal someone's personal information if they've already made it public?" Austin marvels.
The head of DHS (now former. - Note. Ed.) Kristi Noem has repeatedly warned that sharing employee information will be considered a criminal offense. Doxxing typically refers to publishing a person's personal information, such as their home address, phone number, or Social Security number.
A few days later, Austin filed a federal lawsuit to block the subpoena.
Austin doesn't hide the fact that he runs this account, but several other accounts involved in that publication and also received subpoenas are run anonymously. One of these users also filed a motion to block the subpoena under a pseudonym.
You may be interested in: top New York news, stories of our immigrants and helpful tips about life in the Big Apple - read it all on ForumDaily New York
A user with the pseudonym J. Doe also received a subpoena and wrote in a sworn statement: "When I imagine what could happen to me and my family if the government finds out my identity, it scares me."
DHS withdrew both subpoenas after they were challenged in court. According to Lowney of the ACLU of Pennsylvania, this has happened in all similar cases he is aware of.
"The right to anonymously criticize the government is ingrained in the very essence of the First Amendment," Lowney concludes. "Technically, the government shouldn't be able to do anything to such people. But that doesn't mean it won't try."
Read also on ForumDaily:
Trump fired Kristi Noem as DHS director; Senator Markwayne Mullin will lead the agency.
Florida is planning to create its own 'CIA': it could be used to spy on dissidents.
Subscribe to ForumDaily on Google NewsDo you want more important and interesting news about life in the USA and immigration to America? — support us donate! Also subscribe to our page Facebook. Select the “Priority in display” option and read us first. Also, don't forget to subscribe to our РєР ° РЅР ° Р »РІ Telegram and Instagram- there is a lot of interesting things there. And join thousands of readers ForumDaily New York — there you will find a lot of interesting and positive information about life in the metropolis.
Editor's Choice
