You Can’t Do Mass Deportations Without Mass Domestic Surveillance And ICE Is Already Exploring Its Options

ICE has never been opposed to mass surveillance. It has used everything it possibly can to locate Trump’s so-called “bad hombres” and subject them to family separation and a detainment infrastructure incapable of handling the former president’s (and now President-elect) masturbatorial fantasies about “border invasions.”

ICE buys location info from data brokers to evade warrant requirements. It slurps data from utility companies to locate immigrants who need electricity, heat, and internet connections but would rather not be hassled for trying to exist and earn a living by providing this same information directly to the US government.

The operative theory appears to be that immigrants here illegally aren’t protected by the US Constitution. But that’s simply not true. Rights are extended to people living in our borders, whether or not they’re US citizens. However, none of that is going to matter if Trump succeeds in deploying his mass deportation plans — ones that are long on rhetoric and short on actual planning at the moment.

Rest assured, the round-ups will outpace the planning following Trump’s re-ascension. ICE tends to be very proactive when it feels the person in the Oval Office has its back. “Going forward” means “starting now,” as this New Yorker article written by Ronan Farrow points out. Be sure you don’t overlook what’s being said in the last sentence of the article’s opening paragraph.

In September, the Department of Homeland Security (D.H.S.) signed a two-million-dollar contract with Paragon, an Israeli firm whose spyware product Graphite focusses on breaching encrypted-messaging applications such as Telegram and Signal. Wired first reported that the technology was acquired by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—an agency within D.H.S. that will soon be involved in executing the Trump Administration’s promises of mass deportations and crackdowns on border crossings. A source at Paragon told me that the deal followed a vetting process, during which the company was able to demonstrate that it had robust tools to prevent other countries that purchase its spyware from hacking Americans—but that wouldn’t limit the U.S. government’s ability to target its own citizens. 

Nice. So, we’re doing business with a company that will only allow the US government to target US citizens. While it’s great that it’s preventing outside countries from doing this (which is a claim I’m not inclined to believe), it’s definitely shitty that it’s offering a bespoke version to the DHS and ICE for the express purpose of plug-and-play domestic surveillance.

Then there’s the first sentence of the paragraph, which indicates this was in motion two months ahead of the election, which suggests two equally disturbing things. Either the outgoing administration was fine with expanded domestic surveillance or DHS felt it should get the ball rolling because the victor of the 2024 election was likely to be supportive of expanded domestic surveillance. Perhaps the purchasing department was just running a Trump re-election parlay. Or maybe the DHS felt pretty confident Kamala Harris wouldn’t object to mass surveillance, even while she argued against mass deportations. Not great!

The DHS may have handled the macro, but ICE jumped on the micro as soon as it became clear who was headed to the Oval Office in January.

Within hours of Trump’s election to a second term, ICE—which is still under the authority of President Biden, but which has often seemed sympathetic to Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric—put out a new call for private companies to submit plans for augmenting the agency’s surveillance infrastructure, including ankle monitors, and software and hardware used for tracking targets’ biometrics. 

More surveillance and a shit-ton of more money for the private companies handling federal prisoners and federal detainees, some of which have already expressed their pleasure over this year’s presidential election during earnings calls.

As Farrow’s article points out, the federal government has “struggled” both in terms of oversight and accountability when it comes to expanded surveillance powers and surveillance tech rollouts. One could credibly argue you can’t call a terminal lack of interest in oversight and accountability a “struggle.” But no one can argue this turn of events — one that aligns government agencies’ thirst for expanded power with technical advances that make this sort of thing cheaper and easier than it’s ever been — is going to make America great again. It’s just going to make America something it’s really never been: you know, East Germany, the USSR, China, etc.

And we’re all going to pay the price, and not just in terms of the additional taxes that will be needed to gird the infrastructional loins of Trump’s mass deportation plans. If this moves forward, America will be the worst it’s ever been — a nation hollowed out deliberately by bigots who think the nation can only be great if nearly half of its population lives in fear of being forcibly ejected. And while that happens, tech companies that aid and abet this atrocity will make billions off the misery of millions.