DHS’s Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) proudly declaredits “first-ever Alternatives to Detention Personal Privacy Effect Assessment“, extoling the release of a document that the firm need to have produced twenty years back at the start of the so-called Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program. However the PIA that ICE produced is not just decades late, it is substantively lacking, most likely wrong about key truths, and already dated. This PIA procedure shows the behavior of a company that does what it wants and looks for justifications later.
Background
To begin, we need to recognize that ICE is a company with a continuing history of unapproved and violent practices. This month alone, two major stories about ICE’s bad behavior broke. According to Wired, the agency is using administrative subpoenas, a tool indicated to pursue customs lawbreakers, to inquire from “grade schools, news organizations, and abortion clinics”. And a databaseof ICE’s internal examinations demonstrates how ICE representatives and employed contractors regularly breach the firm’s rules on database gain access to, allowing for stalking, wrongful surveillance and the sale of government information. That is on top of a long history of impersonating police officers, abusing immigrantsin ICE detention, constructing a huge monitoring networkof information bought from brokers and other lawfully questionable means, and even detainingand deporting U.S. citizens. Any fulsome accounting for ICE’s effect on immigrants personal privacy and safety requires to think about that ICE representatives and professionals are likely to abuse any information they have access to.
Under section 208 of the E-Government Act of 2002, every federal company is needed to produce a Personal privacy Effect Evaluation (PIA) prior to it rolls out a “new collection of details … utilizing details collection technology”. Agencies throughout the federal government regularly flaunt this requirement by doing their PIAs after they begin using new innovations or initiating brand-new collections. However no agency runs rather like ICE. For many years, the agency has claimedthat its Alternatives to Detention program is covered by tiny amendments to existing PIAs for other programs that failed to represent the size of the ATD program and could not stay up to date with the technology that ICE was utilizing.
The Alternatives to Detention program is a system of electronic tracking technologies that ICE applies to immigrants going through the Southern border to the U.S or arrested in the U.S. and waiting for migration hearings, in addition to immigrants who have actually had their hearings and are awaiting deportation. The ATD program is also frequently referred to as the Intensive Supervision Look Program (ISAP), though there are also a number of small pilot programs that do not rely heavily on monitoring technology. [1] ICE declares that ATD works as a method to keep migrants out of detention centers while ICE keeps tabs on them, but in truth the program has actually become something of a default for migrants crossing the Southern border. Historically, immigrants crossing the border would be launched in the U.S. without any type of tracking. Immigrants released without tracking dependably show up for their court dates. Under the program, ICE currently has over 280,000 migrants under some type of security, according to current recordsfrom Syracuse University’s TRAC Center. That’s down from a record high of practically 380,000 people in December 2022. A Government Responsibility Office evaluationof the ATD program from in 2015 discovered that ICE was not sufficiently overseeing its BI contractors or evaluating the performance of the program.
Immigrants assigned to ATD are launched from ICE jails in exchange for some form of security, which ICE chooses based upon the company’s evaluation of how most likely the immigrant is to attend their migration procedures. The most invasive option is a GPS ankle display that continuously tracks the user and offers ICE access to historical location data. Next is the SmartLink phone app that needs immigrants to check in, submit a selfie for facial acknowledgment matching, and send out ICE their phone’s GPS area. Finally, ICE can need immigrants to contact and report their area, with the immigrant’s identity verified by voice acknowledgment. All of this tech is provided to ICE under a $2.2 billion agreementwith BI Incorporated, a prison technology business. BI doesn’t simply supply the tech to make ATD work, it also supplies case supervisors, third-party contractors doing the work of ICE officers. On April 18, 2023, ICE revealed that it will start evaluating BI’s new GPS monitoring watches, making the PIA released simply weeks ago outdated. ICE is likewise piloting a number of little ATD programs focused on supplying immigrants with resources and intensive case management rather of just surveilling them. The biggest such program is the Young Adult Case Management Program, which targets 18– 19-year-old immigrants with additional encouraging services and conferences instead of needing technological tracking.
If an immigrant can’t keep in routine contact with ICE through their appointed security gadget, ICE is free to put that person back in ICE jails till their court hearings, which might be months or years in the future. Devices failures, unexpected emergency situations, and problem comprehending how to browse the immigration legal system in a foreign language all make it very tough for immigrants to totally comply with ICE’s regards to release. Nevertheless, there is a simple option to security that would meet ICE’s claimed goal of making certain people show up to court. Studies show that offering attorneys for immigrants is by far the most reliable wayto ensure they appear in court. When immigrants have attorneys, they make it to 97 percent of court proceedings in the U.S.
Inside ICE’s New PIA
Personal privacy Effect Evaluations usually follow a specified structure. The document explains the information collection program, and then examines a series of “Personal privacy Risks” organized under the Fair Details Practice Concepts (FIPPS) — Transparency, Person Participation Purpose Requirements, Data Minimization, Usage Limitation, Data Quality and Integrity, Security, and Responsibility and Auditing. Although these are separate categories, there tends to be some overlap in between the appropriate information and policies that figure out whether a threat exists, and to what extent that threat is “mitigated”. With that context, let’s take a look at what the PIA reveals, and how it examines the damages of ATD’s security.
ICE Admits to Invasive, Unnecessary Surveillance Practices
The file reveals that ICE representatives and employed case managers don’t just get access to immigrants current GPS area from BI’s ankle shackle, they also have access to the complete history of a person’s movements while using the shackle. This details is completely irrelevant to ICE’s claimed need– finding immigrants when they stop working to appear for court. All that would need is the immigrant’s existing location. However the Information Minimization area never ever even mentions that this info is unnecessary and ripe for abuse. Instead, it concludes that the danger of over-collection is completely reduced with just a brief reason:
The document likewise stops working to come to grips with the deep harms triggered by ankle monitors, including shame and preconception, depression and suicidality, and the ways ankle shackles disrupt people’s lives. ICE confesses that the monitor can be forced to beep up until the wearer presses a button acknowledging the notification. Failure to react to the beep can be grounds for returning an immigrant to detention. However ICE does not acknowledge the impacts of consistent and disruptive monitoring. According to Human Rights Watch:
- When US migration authorities launch individuals from detention, they frequently put them on ankle screens. But these devices trigger physical and psychological pain and carry a stigma, due in part to their association with the criminal justice system. This makes it harder, for example, for those who use them to get tasks.
- “Whoever discovers that I’m using [the ankle screen], they do not get close to me anymore,” said a 39-year-old guy from Mexico. “I dream of the day someone will cut it.”
ICE Provides Contractors Access to Voluminous Records From Data Brokers
The PIA also exposes, for the first time, that ATD staff specifically (e.g. ICE officers and hired case supervisors) are given access to large troves of data bought from business data brokers. The PIA provides one example of such an information broker, a database of arrest and jail records put together from towns around the country. The file implies that agents have access to other records too but does not really say which other databases ICE agents and case supervisors get access to. Last year, EPIC compiled a report on the numerous ways ICE and CBP handle to avert constitutional limitations on security by purchasing data from suppliers in our report DHS’s Information Reservoir. After describing the information aggregator services initially, the PIA offers no analysis of the threats developed by such a database, including the risk that an immigrant will be incorrectly flagged due to a common name or technical mistake and apprehended for no reason.
ICE Punts, Offers Few Details on Technical Protections
The PIA is also noticeably deficient on the technical details and policies required to figure out whether ICE is doing enough to avoid abusive practices. Regardless of waiting nearly 20 years to publish the PIA, and after numerous years of pledges from ICE’s Personal privacy Office that the document is upcoming, this PIA contains couple of information on the technical requirements or policy controls to avoid abuse.
Notably, it stops working to consist of whether anybody has actually evaluated claims about the technical limits on security in BI’s SmartLink phone app. ICE claims that the app can not access any other details on an individual’s phone except area information when it is utilized for a check in. But ICE supplies no evidence that the app has actually been red-team evaluated to ensure that there are technical limitations on gain access to, suggesting the company is taking specialist BI’s word that the app is safe.
And independent reporting recommends that ICE is wrong about the app just accessing location data when an immigrant “checks in” with their facial recognition selfie. The Guardianreports:
- Immigrants in the program informed the Guardian they had actually been instructed by BI staff members to always keep their phones on so the company could track them. José, an immigrant in the program whose name the Guardian is keeping to secure his migration case, stated he had been told by BI employees to have his phone with him at all times so BI could locate him. Macarena, another [ISAP] participant whose name the Guardian is withholding to avoid jeopardizing her procedures, was informed the app was constantly running and she constantly needed to have her place services on. Several immigrants informed the Guardian they had actually been told they could not let their phone batteries pass away. “It’s precisely like my [ankle screen], but now it’s in my phone,” Macarena said about the instructions she received.
Even by ICE’s own requirements, the PIA is inconsistent. The SmartLink app is only expected to report place data when immigrants check-in, however the document later confesses to a minimum of 2 points of information collection:
A person might log into the app numerous times each day, giving ICE access to even more place data than the agency claims it needs. Despite this, ICE thinks about the danger of relentless tracking and other unauthorized security “partially mitigated”. And ICE believes that the threat that “ICE ATD programs will over-collect information from the participants” is totally reduced. Basically, ICE sees no danger of over-collecting details whatsoever. That analysis contradicts technical details provided in the PIA and outdoors reporting on the program.
ICE Fails to Think About Effect On Third Parties
The file recognizes that there is a severe threat ATD individuals family members, buddies, roomies, and other non-participants will be subjected to wrongful monitoring. But ICE both over-estimates the credibility of consent to the program and deliberately overlooks several manner ins which people could fall under wrongful monitoring. This section never ever talks about the major threat that immigrants video-conferencing with ICE agents through the SmartLink app will subject their homes, households, and pals to monitoring. We have actually all had a roomie or colleague stroll into the background of a Zoom call at some time, however that call probably never ever featured the danger arrest or deportation for the roommate. Previously in the document, ICE indicate a policy of not taping videoconferences but does not even recognize this as a danger to be reduced.
Likewise, ICE does not consider how GPS monitoring of an immigrant can affect their family and friends. Historic place tracking would let ICE understand where an individual’s kids go to school, who that individual frequently visits, and a bevy of other info that may cause somebody being examined or subject them to an ICE raid. The document confesses that ICE does not get approval from loved ones listed as emergency situation contacts to be gotten in touch with for the program, yet still thinks about the threat to be “partly alleviated”.
ICE Totally Overlooks Risks of Interconnected Databases
In one of the most frustrating parts of the file, ICE claims that the serious risk info from the ATD program will be disseminated throughout DHS, throughout the federal government, and might even end up in the hands of local police is “partially mitigated”. However all ICE can point to is a DHS policy that information ought to be transmitted anywhere it may be useful, missing a law to the contrary. That is efficiently an admission that instead of being reduced, this threat is an open, continuous, and hazardous practice.
EPIC has catalogued the damages of interconnected federal government databasesand opposed their growth for years. The more individuals who have access to the extremely invasive data gathered as part of the ATD program, the greater the threat that someone, somewhere along the chain abuses that data. These risks are not hypothetical, as recent reportingon unapproved access to ICE databases shows. But the PIA fully fails to consider that abuse of information is a near-certainty at ICE, which putting that information in more hands by sending it to DHS’s significant databases increases the likelihood of harm.
ICE Overstates the Significance of Small, Low-Tech Pilot Programs
The new PIA spends a substantial amount of time discussing the YACMP program for 18– 19-year-olds regardless of the truth that this program touches just a small portion of all immigrants in the ATD program. Twenty-four of the 35 pages in the file recommendation YACMP, and a comprehensive amount of analysis is concentrated on it, instead of the even more typically used SmartLink app, voice tracking, and GPS monitoring. This is part and parcel of ICE’s technique to whitewash ATD by highlighting little, primarily insignificant pilot programs rather of coming to grips with the reality of subjecting numerous thousands of people every year to security.
Despite long-running claims that ICE is transitioning away from ankle displays and pursuing “de-escalation” of security for numerous participants, records suggest that the agency is not major about decreasing the level of surveillance immigrants go through. Reporting from the Guardianlast year exposed that even when BI’s contracted case managers advise a lower level of monitoring for an individual, ICE only approves that demand about 20 percent of the time. The repeat pattern of declared de-escalation, even while the program grew to tape high numbers of individuals in 2022, is reflected in this file. There is a 10-page addendum on the tiny Case Management Pilot Program, and a frustrating concentrate on the youth program. This optimistic focus comes at the expense of immigrants surveilled under the much larger ISAP part of ATD.
ICE Provides Representatives, and Hired Contractors, Excessive Power Over Immigrants Lives and Security
Among the most constant themes of the PIA is that ATD provides ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations officers and BI’s worked with case supervisors an amazing degree of control over immigrants’ lives. Employed case supervisors are not federal workers, however personal professionals supplied by BI. Yet they have a lot of the powers of an ICE representative, enabled to carry out check-ins, determine conditions of guidance for immigrants, and even utilize GPS tracking to surveil immigrants straight.
As the PIA makes clear, case supervisors have discretion on whether to deal with a failure to check-in as a technical mistake or report it as a violation of the regards to the program, suggesting that the immigrant is described an “absconder” and will be returned to an ICE jail.
Conclusion ICE’s brand-new PIA does not seriously think about the real damages brought on by the ATD program. It consistently overemphasizes the degree of mitigation, and deliberately overlooks many aspects of the program that are most hazardous to immigrants. And the file is extremely focused on small pilot programs, suggesting that ICE wishes to be viewed as more compassionate than the firm actually is. A meaningful analysis of the ATD program would recognize that subjecting hundreds of thousands of people to intensive surveillance over a duration of 20 years in violation of federal personal privacy laws like the E-Government Act can not be corrected by a conclusory effect evaluation. The truth that this document is already out of date with ICE’s brand-new trial of GPS wristwatches shows how the firm has regularly failed to construct personal privacy analysis into the decision-making process, and instead uses PIAs as post-facto reasons for programs the firm would carry out regardless of the damages they trigger.
[1] For a good summary of the program, see this factsheet from the American Migration Council.