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.”
