Ukrainians Turned Away at US-Mexico Border, More Concerns about ICE's Secret Data Collection and Alternatives to Detention Program

Today’s issue continues two of my recent trends: tracking the refugee consequences of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and examining the role of data collection and aggregation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement through various technologies and programs.

Just a short note before I get started. I created this newsletter as an attempt to bring more people with me as I track the evolution of immigration laws and policies, examine the data behind these trends, and conduct in-depth academic research on various specific topics. I have to keep up with this news, so I figured I would share a fraction of that work with others with the hope of saving you time and putting immigration news in perspective. The response over the past few weeks has been very generous and I just want to say ‘thank you’ to the people (like Jim McKeever) who have shared valuable resources in the comments or sent kind messages. I’ll keep this up as long as you find it valuable. Please share it with others who might find it valuable (e.g. immigration law students) and if you want to get this as an email, sign up here.

Okay, let’s get into today’s topics.

1. Ukrainian Family Turned Away at US-Mexico Border

2. ICE Secretly Collecting Data on Money Transfers

3. The Personal Toll of Alternatives to Detention

Ukrainian Family Turned Away at US-Mexico Border

Any crisis in the world that produces refugees will eventually impact the US-Mexico border. This general principle was reinforced yesterday when Kate Morrissey from the San Diego Union-Tribune reported that a Ukrainian family who left Ukraine, flew through Germany to Mexico, then arrived at the US-Mexico border were turned away.

Morrissey writes:

“The 34-year-old mother, who asked to be identified as Sofiia, and her three children ages 14, 12 and 6, said that when she fled her country, she headed to the only family she has outside of Ukraine — U.S. citizens who live in California. But she was turned back by the same border policies that have stopped asylum seekers from around the world and stranded them in Tijuana for years.”

The family arrived at the San Ysidro point of entry just south of San Diego because they have a family member who is a US citizen that lives in California. This is a good reminder that even though proximity does drive the bulk of refugee relocation in the immediate aftermath of a crisis, global refugee and migration flows are also influenced by historical and family relationships that persist across distances.

• Read the rest of the story here: Ukrainian family fleeing Russian invasion turned away from U.S. border.

ICE Secretly Collecting Data on Money Transfers

“A law-enforcement arm of the Department of Homeland Security participated in a secret bulk surveillance program that collected millions of records about certain money transfers of some Americans without a warrant,” writes Michelle Hackman for the Wall Street Journal.

I wrote yesterday about my concern that we are not paying enough attention to how ICE’s massive data collection operations feed into and draw upon other similar data collection and aggregation operations across the spectrum of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies.

Hackman’s reporting adds to this concern, but even more importantly, illustrates how little congressional oversight exists for these types of data aggregation efforts. Congress can’t effectively keep up with how quickly ICE’s data collection efforts are evolving.

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Hackman goes on to add:

“The surveillance program, overseen by investigators with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, collected records of any money transfer greater than $500 to or from Mexico, Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) said in a letter sent to the DHS inspector general. It also collected information on domestic or international transfers exceeding $500 to or from the states of Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas.”

Note that the company that ICE was obtaining this information from is called, not joking here, “Transaction Record Analysis Center (TRAC).” (Not cool. Not cool at all.)

• Read Hackman’s whole story here: Secret Surveillance Program Collects Americans’ Money-Transfer Data, Senator Says.

• Hamed Aleaziz from Buzzfeed wrote a related article here: ICE Conducted Sweeping Surveillance Of Money Transfers Sent To And From The US, A Senator Says.

The Personal Toll of Alternatives to Detention

I continue to push back on any attempts to frame ATD as “better than detention” with the argument that they may be better for individuals, but the framework of better is not adequate to understanding how ATD is different in both kind and scope.

A fantastic article by Johana Bhuiyan in the Guardian this week highlights the many (many!) issues that immigrants face on ATD, from inconsistent and confusing rules to technology that doesn’t work.

Like attorneys that I’ve talked to about this technology, Bhuiyan reports on immigrants who are on ATD experiencing the anxiety that comes with feeling that the government is always watching you, always listening to you, always tracking you—and remember that very many of these immigrants are in the United States to request asylum for persecution in their home country, which means they may have other PTSD and trauma-related issues to deal with on a daily basis.

In one particularly disturbing but illustrative example of the merger of government surveillance and private industry, the newest of these technologies, SmartLINK, is a smartphone app that is downloaded to immigrants’ smartphones. This means many people are leaving frustrated reviews that illustrate technological problems.

Google Play and App Store reviews of the app listed a wide variety of issues, including people missing their check-ins because their pictures wouldn’t go through, the facial recognition technology had failed to recognize them, or the notifications hadn’t worked. “Couldn’t send a picture …” one review read. “Got a call and got told to delete and reinstall, I deleted the app and now I can’t install it back. They blamed us for not sending pictures. Ridiculous!”

This serves as a reminder that government/private surveillance technology doesn’t always work, but even when it doesn’t work, it still exacts a disciplinary toll on immigrants who bear the burden of these systems—whether they are working or broken.

• Read the whole article here: ‘Constantly afraid’: immigrants on life under the US government’s eye.

Image from article.

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