ICE agents aren’t solely on the streets. The agency is using AI and other means to help make arrests.
ICE contractors are sent tens of thousands of names of immigrants, as many as 50,000 per company each month.
These days, immigration enforcement is not just taking place on the streets. ICE is funneling tens of thousands of immigrants’ names to private contractors who mine databases and use artificial intelligence to help identify and locate those being sought, according to a new analysis by the American Immigration Council.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s effort to find, arrest, and deport people who are in the country without official permission is being augmented by private companies, data brokers, and state and local agencies, the Washington-based nonprofit reported. Here is a look at some of the findings:
What is ‘skip tracing’?
Each month, the council said, ICE contractors are sent thousands of names ― as many as 50,000 per contractor per month. They are asked to locate those people as quickly as possible, so ICE can conduct targeted enforcement operations to make arrests.
The process is called skip tracing ― finding someone through the use of public records, databases, online information, physical surveillance, and other tools that increasingly include artificial intelligence. Such tracing has long been used by debt collectors and private investigators.
But now it has been embraced by the Department of Homeland Security, where it raises legal questions about privacy, due process, and the role of corporations in government surveillance, wrote Steven Hubbard, senior data scientist with the council.
As a whole, he wrote, it comprises “a massive AI-assisted surveillance system targeting more than one million immigrants in the United States.”
How does ICE use these systems?
ICE asks its contractors to perform tasks that include the verification of addresses and taking time-stamped photographs of homes and workplaces, the council analysis said. Personal information that is given to the companies can include names, dates of birth, and addresses, culled from government records, commercial data, and online sources.
Details about the specific databases being used, how the information is vetted for accuracy, and the potential correction of errors have not been made public, the council said.
Who are the companies working with ICE?
Some have backgrounds in the military or in intelligence, such as Bluehawk LLC and SOS International LLC. They traditionally support national security, not civil immigration enforcement.
Contractor BI Inc. is a subsidiary of the for-profit prison company GEO Group, which operates immigration detention centers that include the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Pennsylvania. That means, the council noted, that the company can benefit by locating the very immigrants it will later detain.
What is the role of AI in ICE enforcement?
AI is being increasingly used to help contractors process more cases faster and across bigger geographic areas. That also increases the risk of error, the council’s analysis noted, citing how facial recognition systems have misidentified people in ways that led to wrongful arrests.
The businesses are rewarded for speed, receiving bonuses if they can verify a person’s location within one or two weeks. That incentive risks compromising due process, accuracy, and the ethics of how the information is gathered, the council said, with companies essentially acting as ICE bounty hunters.