Immigration enforcement is increasingly a high-tech
enterprise in the US.
Maru Mora-Villalpando had been living in the United States for 21
years when a letter arrived at her door with a deportation
notice.
It was 11 months into Donald Trump’s presidency, and
Mora-Villalpando thought she had taken all the necessary steps
to keep her address hidden from authorities.
But she did not realize that immigration officials could
track her whereabouts using basic information she had assumed
was private, such as her car registration or utility bills.
“I didn’t know all this data was being packaged up and given
to authorities,” said Mora-Villalpando, a community organizer
who works with immigrant and undocumented communities in
Seattle, Washington.
“People would see ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement)
agents outside their homes, and we didn’t know how they would
find us – well now we know.”
The Trump campaign and the Department of Homeland Security
(DHS) did not respond to requests for comment.
HIGH-TECH ENTERPRISE
Authorities can track migrants using data brokers that
create detailed profiles of immigrants based on thousands of
data points, as well as other state-of-the-art surveillance
tools including facial recognition and license plate readers.
Algorithms can help decide an immigrant’s fate on a range of
issues, from whether they should wear an ankle monitor to
whether an asylum case is flagged as suspicious.
Authorities are also using ever more artificial intelligence
(AI), which campaigners worry could generate target lists for
deportation or automatically reject asylum applicants en masse.
With Trump leading in the polls, many organizations that
work with immigrant communities worry these tools could be used
to speedily target then deport some of the more than 11 million
undocumented people who are estimated to live in the U.S.
“There’s a huge tech infrastructure ready to do just that,”
said Jacinta Gonzalez, field director of Mijente, a grassroots
organization that works on immigration issues.
In a memo released in 2023, the DHS, which oversees
immigration enforcement, said it would “not use AI technology to
enable improper systemic, indiscriminate, or large-scale
monitoring, surveillance or tracking of individuals.”
Undocumented immigrants always have risked deportation –
even those who came as children or who are near-lifelong U.S.
residents.
Despite more than two decades of trying, Congress has never
been able to pass a law that would normalize their status.
Instead, authorities have exercised discretion and chosen to
steer clear of deporting certain segments of the population,
such as migrants brought in by parents before they had turned
two, a cohort known as “The Dreamers”.
The number of immigrants deported from the interior of the
country has fluctuated wildly over the last decade, ranging from
under 60,000 to well over 200,000.
“Mass deportation is easier said than done,” said Muzaffar
Chisti, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute think
tank.
There are multiple steps to removing an undocumented person,
and he doubts Trump could muster the manpower, money or
logistics to deport the millions he has promised to evict.
“Everyone may be under surveillance but to turn it into
removal is not easy,” he said. “But making people look over
their shoulder – creating an atmosphere of fear, he can do
that.”
