Unmasked: "ImmigrationOS" - Trump's Massive Surveillance on Migrants
Trump government creates migrant data software and a vast migrant database
Hear ye, hear ye! It's all about immigration policy under President Trump's command, and things are getting techy. Behind the curtains, team Elon Musk, a.k.a., the "Department of Government Efficiency," or Doge, is crafting a mega-database to gather info from various bureaucratic beasties. They say this digitized angel will help find and monitor migrants like never before, with potential consequences for those unlucky souls without US citizenship and their kin with US passports.
Real estate of family secrets Approximately 14 million people in the US are thought to be without valid residence permits. Trump has signed broad decrees to take aim at migrants, speeding up mass deportations. Border agents are reporting historically few migrants apprehended as they cross into the US from Mexico, scared stiff of poor treatment. So, the Trump administration is pulling out all the stops to track migrants' every step across the nation.
Politics ain't a walk in the parkThe technical expertise for this tracking mission is more potent than ever. This new mega-database will help the Department of Homeland Security and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency perform deportations more efficiently. According to rumors, Doge's "Immigration Task Force" is melding biometric data, Social Security Administration info, IRS data, and the Department of Health data with ICE. Departments of Labor and Housing and Urban Development data are also on the chopping block.
Last month, ICE entrusted data company Palantir to program the software needed to use this database. The aim is to follow migrant movements as closely as possible in real-time. An American Civil Liberties Union rep told Wired: "This is a massive dragnet that will have all kinds of consequences not only for people without papers but also for US citizens and people who are here legally."
Seven Million Sought
Tax data can tell a tale as old as time. Those unauthorized to live in the US who still work here receive an IRS identification number and pay tax via it. Until now, the IRS had kept mum about sharing its data with other agencies, but it seems that policy has changed. The Department of Homeland Security now has access, after a court dismissed NGO appeals. Several high-ranking IRS officials resigned in protest at the collaboration. As many as seven million non-US citizens could be tracked down using tax data.
Trump's tough stance on deportationThe government has set itself a target of at least one million deportations in Trump's first year. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is gunning for that target by offering voluntary departures, which the government calls "self-deportation." There's even an app where migrants can state their intention to leave the country. The government promises a $1,000 reward and covered flight costs for those who play ball.
Caution: Final Warning
Warning videos have been circulating online and on TV for months, with Noem giving migrants the cold shoulder: "We will find you and we will deport you." Noem also made a spectacle of herself in El Salvador, posing with a golden Rolex in front of brutally treated prisoners at the high-security CECOT prison. Special interest groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have stated that conditions at the facility are inhumane. Noem said defiantly, "This is what happens if you illegally enter the country: You will be removed and you will be prosecuted."
Software with Tracking Function
Politics and Tech Giants
The tech world is never shy about controversy. These days, it's Peter Thiel-backed Palantir in the spotlight, set to help in the manhunt. The software they're developing, nicknamed "ImmigrationOS," or "Immigration Operating System," should wrap up by the end of September. The agreement with Silicon Valley's Palantir lasts until 2027. Internal whispers suggest that the collaboration is generating heated debate. Palantir justifies its actions to its employees by saying that migrants will be treated fairly with the software. Yet, Trump's administration hardly seems preoccupied with fair play. The most notorious example is the hundreds of people transported to the prison in El Salvador without judicial proceedings.
ICE, the famous acronym for Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, plans to utilize Palantir's software. It's designed to comply with Trump's orders swiftly to stop the supposed "invasion" of the US by migrants and "protect the American people," as it says in the tender. ICE claims that Trump's promise to deport en masse relies heavily on this supporting software. It is intended to prioritize deportations, focusing on criminal organizations, violent criminals, and foreigners with expired visas, track the movements of migrants who choose to leave voluntarily, and compile all data from non-US citizens in an overview, an "immigration lifecycle" that shows timeline events.
ICE employees make the call on which migrants to arrest and detain in detention centers. Currently, a judge has the final say over their fate, but the US government is now questioning that procedure. Homeland Security Secretary Noem stated that the habeas corpus, the right to a judicial review of an arrest, could be suspended for migrants in her opinion. Trump's deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, a radical hardliner on immigration, revealed that the government is mulling over this possibility.
Increased Risk of Misuse
So far, data from different government agencies has been kept separate, even from different departments within the Department of Homeland Security. "There's a reason these systems are isolated," said Victoria Noble, a lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, to US magazine "Wired": "If you put all the data in a central repository that all employees of this agency, or even other agencies, can access, the risk increases significantly that these information will be accessed by people who don't need it and misuse it for unauthorized purposes or repressive goals." For example, to go after folks they don't like, such as dissidents, immigrants, or other groups.
Currently, the government maintains that they aim only to track the lives of migrants using new software and a database. How the United States government could use such a massive database and interfaces with comprehensive agency data remains to be seen, depending on the intentions and actions of the respective administration and individual employees. The complaint and ombudsman offices in the Department of Homeland Security, which could prevent data misuse, were abolished by the Trump administration. Trump spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin defended the decision, stating, "They hindered the enforcement of immigration laws. They often acted as internal opponents."
Source: ntv.de
- Donald Trump
- Deportation
- Software
In light of the concerning ImmigrationOS development, the administration's policies have sparked debates in various sectors, including community, employment, politics, technology, general-news, and crime-and-justice. This software, allegedly used for tracking migrants, may potentially impact employment policies due to the circulation of warnings for those without US citizenship.
The technology aspect comes to light as the Department of Homeland Security collaborates with Palantir to program the software, raising concerns about the potential misuse of consolidated data from different government agencies and departments. This could significantly increase the risk of such information being accessed by unauthorized individuals for repressive purposes or targeted actions against specific groups.
