AI-Powered Immigration Tools: From Biden to Trump's Potential Crackdown

How Biden's AI tech could play a role in Trump's immigration crackdown

President-elect Donald Trump will return to power next year with a raft of technological tools at his disposal that would help deliver his campaign promise of cracking down on immigration -- among them, surveillance and artificial intelligence technology that the Biden administration already uses to help make crucial decisions in tracking, detaining and ultimately deporting immigrants lacking permanent legal status. While immigration officials have used the tech for years, an October letter from the Department of Homeland Security obtained exclusively by The Associated Press details how those tools -- some of them powered by AI -- help make decisions over whether an immigrant should be detained or surveilled. One algorithm, for example, ranks immigrants with a "Hurricane Score," ranging from 1-5, to assess whether someone will "abscond" from the agency's supervision. The letter, sent by DHS Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer Eric Hysen to the immigrant rights group Just Futures Law, revealed that the score calculates the potential risk that an immigrant -- with a pending case -- will fail to check in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. The algorithm relies on several factors, he said, including an immigrant's number of violations and length of time in the program, and whether the person has a travel document. Hysen wrote that ICE officers consider the score, among other information, when making decisions about an immigrant's case. "The Hurricane Score does not make decisions on detention, deportation, or surveillance; instead, it is used to inform human decision-making," Hysen wrote. Also included in the government's tool kit is a mobile app called SmartLINK that uses facial matching and can track an immigrant's specific location. Nearly 200,000 people without legal status who are in removal proceedings are enrolled in the Alternatives to Detention program, under which certain immigrants can live in the U.S. while their immigration cases are pending. In exchange, SmartLINK and GPS trackers used by ICE rigorously surveil them and their movements. The phone application draws on facial matching technology and geolocation data, which has been used before to find and arrest those using the app. Just Futures Law wrote to Hysen earlier this year, questioning the fairness of using an algorithm to assess whether someone is a flight risk and raising concerns over how much data SmartLINK collects. Such AI systems, which score or screen people, are used widely but remain largely unregulated even though some have been found to discriminate on race, gender, or other protected traits. DHS said in an email that it is committed to ensuring that its use of AI is transparent and safeguards privacy and civil rights while avoiding biases. The agency said it is working to implement the Biden administration's requirements on using AI, but Hysen said in his letter that security officials may waive those requirements for certain uses. Trump has publicly vowed to repeal Biden's AI policy when he returns to the White House in January. "DHS uses AI to assist our personnel in their work, but DHS does not use the outputs of AI systems as the sole basis for any law enforcement action or denial of benefits," a spokesperson for DHS told the AP. Trump has not revealed how he plans to carry out his promised deportation of an estimated 11 million people living in the country illegally. Although he has proposed invoking wartime powers, as well as military involvement, the plan would face major logistical challenges -- such as where to keep those who have been detained and how to find people spread across the country -- that AI-powered surveillance tools could potentially address. Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for Trump, did not answer questions about how the incoming administration plans to use DHS' tech, but said in a statement that "President Trump will marshal every federal and state power necessary to institute the largest deportation operation" in American history. Over 100 civil society groups sent a letter on Friday urging the Office of Management and Budget to require DHS to comply with the Biden administration's guidelines. A spokesperson for OMB said that agencies must align their AI tools with the guidelines by December 1, and that any extensions or waivers of that deadline will be publicly disclosed next month. Just Futures Law's executive director, Paromita Shah, said if immigrants are scored as flight risks, they are more likely to remain in detention, "limiting their ability to prepare a defense in their case in immigration court, which is already difficult enough as it is." SmartLINK, part of the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program, is run by BI Inc., a subsidiary of the private prison company The GEO Group. The GEO Group also contracts with ICE to run detention centers. ICE is tight-lipped about how it uses SmartLINK's location feature to find and arrest immigrants. Still, public records show that during Trump's first term in 2018, Manassas, Virginia-based employees of BI Inc. relayed immigrants' GPS locations to federal authorities, who then arrested over 40 people. In a report last year to address privacy issues and concerns, DHS said that the mobile app includes security features that "prohibit access to information on the participant's mobile device, with the exception of location data points when the app is open." But the report notes that there remains a risk that data collected from people "may be misused for unauthorized persistent monitoring." Such information could also be stored in other ICE and DHS databases and used for other DHS mission purposes, the report said. On investor calls earlier this month, private prison companies were clear-eyed about the opportunities ahead. The GEO Group's executive chairman George Christopher Zoley said that he expects the incoming Trump administration to "take a much more aggressive approach regarding border security as well as interior enforcement and to request additional funding from Congress to achieve these goals." "In GEO's ISAP program, we can scale up from the present 182,500 participants to several hundreds of thousands, or even millions of participants," Zoley said. That same day, the head of another private prison company told investors he would be watching closely to see how the new administration may change immigrant monitoring programs. "It's an opportunity for multiple vendors to engage ICE about the program going forward and think about creative and innovative solutions to not only get better outcomes, but also scale up the program as necessary," Damon Hininger, CEO of the private prison company CoreCivic Inc. said on an earnings call. GEO did not respond to requests for comment. In a statement, CoreCivic said that it has played "a valued but limited role in America's immigration system" for both Democrats and Republicans for over 40 years.

How Trump's mass deportation plan can use AI to extend immigration crackdown

Secretary Mayorkas: Adoption of newly unveiled AI guidelines could ward off stifling regulation Petra Molnar, a lawyer and anthropologist specializing in the impacts of migration technologies on people crossing borders and the author of "The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence," has studied the use of technology along the border, which includes drones and robodogs, as faculty associate at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. She has been critical of AI's use at the border under Democratic Party administrations, but does think that the weaponization of AI will grow under Trump's administration. "Knowing the Trump administration has signaled they want to conduct the largest mass deportation in U.S. history and the fact that they have these tools at their disposal, it creates a surveillance dragnet not just at the border but inland that could capture communities all over the U.S.," Molnar said, adding that an entire ecosystem of industry has been created to police borders and immigration. "There's been a huge influence of the private sector in the growth of the border-industrial problem," Molnar said, adding that private companies have led the way in introducing robodogs (with benign names like Snoopy and Sniffer), drones, and AI-infused towers. "Much of the surveillance technology has been expanded under Democratic administrations, but there has been a signaling of the incoming administration that tech will be a tool to assist them in accomplishing their goals," Molnar said. Remaya Campbell, acting commissioner for Homeland Security for the District of Columbia, said that AI could automate immigration-related decision-making, bypassing traditional processes. "AI could be used to identify individuals for deportation broadly. With little regard for privacy or due process," Campbell said, adding that AI decision-making systems operate with the values their users impart. "And in the Trump administration, that could certainly mean reinforcing intersectional biases to align with political priorities," she said. "At a minimum, we could expect AI to be leveraged not as a tool for efficiency, fairness, and safety in immigration-related decision-making, but as an instrument of systemic bias and authoritarian rule," Campbell added. Neil Sahota, an AI advisor to the United Nations AI for Good Initiative, said he shares those concerns given that AI already has a muscular presence in managing the vast, challenging-to-monitor U.S. borders, and it that usage will expand under Trump. DHS's Customs and Border Protection already has employed AI-powered drones with machine-learning capabilities to identify unusual patterns that could signal illegal crossings, drones that can distinguish between people, animals, and vehicles, and help to minimize false alarms, Sahota said. Sensor towers equipped with AI provide 24/7 monitoring, allowing faster response times and freeing up human resources. "Expectations are that a Trump administration would push for even more AI surveillance, potentially introducing autonomous patrols and expanding biometric screening," Sahota said. While this could improve border security, it could also spark concerns around privacy, particularly for those living near borders. And Sahota added that the Trump administration's use of AI could expand beyond security and aid in deportation. "AI surveillance systems would be a cornerstone of Trump's deportation strategy," Sahotra said. "Enhanced AI could fast-track deportations," Sahota added, which would come with the potential for rights violations and racial profiling. These systems use facial recognition and behavior analysis capabilities to identify people suspected of being in the country illegally, but he cautioned that these systems don't always get it right. "How do we handle situations where AI makes errors in identifying people's immigration status? What if the system mistakenly flags a legal resident or citizen for deportation? The consequences are devastating for families and our community," Sahota said. Laura MacCleery, senior policy director of Unidos U.S., the nation's largest Hispanic advocacy group, said AI accuracy problems are well known, with systems making inaccurate conclusions, and data on people of color tending to be less accurate. DMV records, utility bills, and facial recognition technology at the border and the airports will all be tools that could be enhanced with AI to pursue deportation. "These technologies could be changed and altered and have different guardrails in a different administration. The concern about mass deportations is the enhanced use of AI by immigration enforcement and to superpower the ability to monitor public data, MacCleery said. It is inevitable, she said, that AI will sweep up U.S. citizens. "Because there are U.S. citizens that live with people of different immigration status and those people will get swept up and the due process rights of people who are here legally could be violated and that is super problematic and an inevitable consequence of the overuse of these kinds of technologies," MacCleery said. But Marina Shepelsky, CEO, co-founder, and immigration attorney at New York-based Shepelsky Law Group, said she is not thinking about AI policy in the Trump administration as a dystopian technology to fear. "He is a businessman, he will see value in allowing AI to progress and grow to make the lives of lawyers like myself, doctors, scientists, etc., easier," Shepelsky said. She thinks AI will blossom and be deregulated in a Trump administration. "Hopefully, with Elon Musk at his side, President Trump would push for more foreign tech AI experts to come to the U.S. quicker and with less red tape to improve AI and reduce its current awkwardness," Shepelsky said. "I am not an alarmist and not tearing out my hair about Trump being our next president. I may not like all his policies, but with AI - I do think he will push for its growth, and for laws and regulations to be more flexible to allow AI to grow."

Biden administration surveillance and AI tools for tracking and ranking immigrants set to help Trump deportation crackdown

While immigration officials have used the tech for years, an October letter from the Department of Homeland Security obtained exclusively by The Associated Press details how those tools -- some of them powered by AI -- help make decisions over whether an immigrant should be detained or surveilled. One algorithm, for example, ranks immigrants with a "Hurricane Score," ranging from 1-5, to assess whether someone will "abscond" from the agency's supervision. The letter, sent by DHS Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer Eric Hysen to the immigrant rights group Just Futures Law, revealed that the score calculates the potential risk that an immigrant -- with a pending case -- will fail to check in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. The algorithm relies on several factors, he said, including an immigrant's number of violations and length of time in the program, and whether the person has a travel document. Hysen wrote that ICE officers consider the score, among other information, when making decisions about an immigrant's case. "The Hurricane Score does not make decisions on detention, deportation, or surveillance; instead, it is used to inform human decision-making," Hysen wrote. Also included in the government's tool kit is a mobile app called SmartLINK that uses facial matching and can track an immigrant's specific location. Nearly 200,000 people without legal status who are in removal proceedings are enrolled in the Alternatives to Detention program, under which certain immigrants can live in the U.S. while their immigration cases are pending. In exchange, SmartLINK and GPS trackers used by ICE rigorously surveil them and their movements. The phone application draws on facial matching technology and geolocation data, which has been used before to find and arrest those using the app. Just Futures Law wrote to Hysen earlier this year, questioning the fairness of using an algorithm to assess whether someone is a flight risk and raising concerns over how much data SmartLINK collects. Such AI systems, which score or screen people, are used widely but remain largely unregulated even though some have been found to discriminate on race, gender or other protected traits. DHS said in an email that it is committed to ensuring that its use of AI is transparent and safeguards privacy and civil rights while avoiding biases. The agency said it is working to implement the Biden administration's requirements on using AI, but Hysen said in his letter that security officials may waive those requirements for certain uses. Trump has publicly vowed to repeal Biden's AI policy when he returns to the White House in January. "DHS uses AI to assist our personnel in their work, but DHS does not use the outputs of AI systems as the sole basis for any law enforcement action or denial of benefits," a spokesperson for DHS told the AP. Trump has not revealed how he plans to carry out his promised deportation of an estimated 11 million people living in the country illegally. Although he has proposed invoking wartime powers, as well as military involvement, the plan would face major logistical challenges -- such as where to keep those who have been detained and how to find people spread across the country -- that AI-powered surveillance tools could potentially address. Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for Trump, did not answer questions about how the incoming administration plans to use DHS' tech, but said in a statement that "President Trump will marshal every federal and state power necessary to institute the largest deportation operation" in American history. Over 100 civil society groups sent a letter on Friday urging the Office of Management and Budget to require DHS to comply with the Biden administration's guidelines. A spokesperson for OMB said that agencies must align their AI tools with the guidelines by December 1, and that any extensions or waivers of that deadline will be publicly disclosed next month. Just Futures Law's executive director, Paromita Shah, said if immigrants are scored as flight risks, they are more likely to remain in detention, "limiting their ability to prepare a defense in their case in immigration court, which is already difficult enough as it is." SmartLINK, part of the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program, is run by BI Inc., a subsidiary of the private prison company The GEO Group. The GEO Group also contracts with ICE to run detention centers. ICE is tight-lipped about how it uses SmartLINK's location feature to find and arrest immigrants. Still, public records show that during Trump's first term in 2018, Manassas, Virginia-based employees of BI Inc. relayed immigrants' GPS locations to federal authorities, who then arrested over 40 people. In a report last year to address privacy issues and concerns, DHS said that the mobile app includes security features that "prohibit access to information on the participant's mobile device, with the exception of location data points when the app is open." But the report notes that there remains a risk that data collected from people "may be misused for unauthorized persistent monitoring." Such information could also be stored in other ICE and DHS databases and used for other DHS mission purposes, the report said. On investor calls earlier this month, private prison companies were clear-eyed about the opportunities ahead. The GEO Group's executive chairman George Christopher Zoley said that he expects the incoming Trump administration to "take a much more aggressive approach regarding border security as well as interior enforcement and to request additional funding from Congress to achieve these goals." "In GEO's ISAP program, we can scale up from the present 182,500 participants to several hundreds of thousands, or even millions of participants," Zoley said. That same day, the head of another private prison company told investors he would be watching closely to see how the new administration may change immigrant monitoring programs. "It's an opportunity for multiple vendors to engage ICE about the program going forward and think about creative and innovative solutions to not only get better outcomes, but also scale up the program as necessary," Damon Hininger, CEO of the private prison company CoreCivic Inc. said on an earnings call. GEO did not respond to requests for comment. In a statement, CoreCivic said that it has played "a valued but limited role in America's immigration system" for both Democrats and Republicans for over 40 years.

Surveillance tech advances by Biden could aid in Trump's promised crackdown on immigration

President-elect Donald Trump will return to power next year with a raft of technological tools at his disposal that would help deliver his campaign promise of cracking down on immigration -- among them, surveillance and artificial intelligence technology that the Biden administration already uses to help make crucial decisions in tracking, detaining and ultimately deporting immigrants lacking permanent legal status. While immigration officials have used the tech for years, an October letter from the Department of Homeland Security obtained exclusively by The Associated Press details how those tools -- some of them powered by AI -- help make life-altering decisions for immigrants, including whether they should be detained or surveilled. One algorithm, for example, ranks immigrants with a "Hurricane Score," ranging from 1-5, to assess whether someone will "abscond" from the agency's supervision. The letter, sent by DHS Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer Eric Hysen to the immigrant rights group Just Futures Law, revealed that the score calculates the potential risk that an immigrant -- with a pending case -- will fail to check in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. The algorithm relies on several factors, he said, including an immigrant's number of violations and length of time in the program, and whether the person has a travel document. Hysen wrote that ICE officers consider the score, among other information, when making decisions about an immigrant's case. "The Hurricane Score does not make decisions on detention, deportation, or surveillance; instead, it is used to inform human decision-making," Hysen wrote. Also included in the government's tool kit is a mobile app called SmartLINK that uses facial matching and can track an immigrant's specific location. Nearly 200,000 people without legal status who are in removal proceedings are enrolled in the Alternatives to Detention program, under which certain immigrants can live in the U.S. while their immigration cases are pending. In exchange, SmartLINK and GPS trackers used by ICE rigorously surveil them and their movements. The phone application draws on facial matching technology and geolocation data, which has been used before to find and arrest those using the app. Just Futures Law wrote to Hysen earlier this year, questioning the fairness of using an algorithm to assess whether someone is a flight risk and raising concerns over how much data SmartLINK collects. Such AI systems, which score or screen people, are used widely but remain largely unregulated even though some have been found to discriminate on race, gender or other protected traits. DHS said in an email that it is committed to ensuring that its use of AI is transparent and safeguards privacy and civil rights while avoiding biases. The agency said it is working to implement the Biden administration's requirements on using AI, but Hysen said in his letter that security officials may waive those requirements for certain uses. Trump has publicly vowed to repeal Biden's AI policy when he returns to the White House in January. "DHS uses AI to assist our personnel in their work, but DHS does not use the outputs of AI systems as the sole basis for any law enforcement action or denial of benefits," a spokesperson for DHS told the AP. Trump has not revealed how he plans to carry out his promised deportation of an estimated 11 million people living in the country illegally. Although he has proposed invoking wartime powers, as well as military involvement, the plan would face major logistical challenges -- such as where to keep those who have been detained and how to find people spread across the country -- that AI-powered surveillance tools could potentially address. Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for Trump, did not answer questions about how they plan to use DHS' tech, but said in a statement that "President Trump will marshal every federal and state power necessary to institute the largest deportation operation" in American history. Over 100 civil society groups sent a letter on Friday urging the Office of Management and Budget to require DHS to comply with the Biden administration's guidelines. OMB did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Just Futures Law's executive director, Paromita Shah, said if immigrants are scored as flight risks, they are more likely to remain in detention, "limiting their ability to prepare a defense in their case in immigration court, which is already difficult enough as it is." SmartLINK, part of the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program, is run by BI Inc., a subsidiary of the private prison company The GEO Group. The GEO Group also contracts with ICE to run detention centers. ICE is tight-lipped about how it uses SmartLINK's location feature to find and arrest immigrants. Still, public records show that during Trump's first term in 2018, Manassas, Virginia-based employees of BI Inc. relayed immigrants' GPS locations to federal authorities, who then arrested over 40 people. In a report last year to address privacy issues and concerns, DHS said that the mobile app includes security features that "prohibit access to information on the participant's mobile device, with the exception of location data points when the app is open." But the report notes that there remains a risk that data collected from people "may be misused for unauthorized persistent monitoring." Such information could also be stored in other ICE and DHS databases and used for other DHS mission purposes, the report said. On investor calls earlier this month, private prison companies were clear-eyed about the opportunities ahead. The GEO Group's executive chairman George Christopher Zoley said that he expects the incoming Trump administration to "take a much more aggressive approach regarding border security as well as interior enforcement and to request additional funding from Congress to achieve these goals." "In GEO's ISAP program, we can scale up from the present 182,500 participants to several hundreds of thousands, or even millions of participants," Zoley said. That same day, the head of another private prison company told investors he would be watching closely to see how the new administration may change immigrant monitoring programs. "It's an opportunity for multiple vendors to engage ICE about the program going forward and think about creative and innovative solutions to not only get better outcomes, but also scale up the program as necessary," Damon Hininger, CEO of the private prison company CoreCivic Inc. said on an earnings call. GEO did not respond to requests for comment. In a statement, CoreCivic said that it has played "a valued but limited role in America's immigration system" for both Democrats and Republicans for over 40 years.

Surveillance tech advances by Biden could aid in Trump's promised crackdown on immigration

President-elect Donald Trump will return to power next year with a raft of technological tools at his disposal that would help deliver his campaign promise of cracking down on immigration -- among them, surveillance and artificial intelligence technology that the Biden administration already uses to help make crucial decisions in tracking, detaining and ultimately deporting immigrants lacking permanent legal status. While immigration officials have used the tech for years, an October letter from the Department of Homeland Security obtained exclusively by The Associated Press details how those tools -- some of them powered by AI -- help make life-altering decisions for immigrants, including whether they should be detained or surveilled. One algorithm, for example, ranks immigrants with a "Hurricane Score," ranging from 1-5, to assess whether someone will "abscond" from the agency's supervision. The letter, sent by DHS Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer Eric Hysen to the immigrant rights group Just Futures Law, revealed that the score calculates the potential risk that an immigrant -- with a pending case -- will fail to check in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. The algorithm relies on several factors, he said, including an immigrant's number of violations and length of time in the program, and whether the person has a travel document. Hysen wrote that ICE officers consider the score, among other information, when making decisions about an immigrant's case. "The Hurricane Score does not make decisions on detention, deportation, or surveillance; instead, it is used to inform human decision-making," Hysen wrote. Also included in the government's tool kit is a mobile app called SmartLINK that uses facial matching and can track an immigrant's specific location. Nearly 200,000 people without legal status who are in removal proceedings are enrolled in the Alternatives to Detention program, under which certain immigrants can live in the U.S. while their immigration cases are pending. In exchange, SmartLINK and GPS trackers used by ICE rigorously surveil them and their movements. The phone application draws on facial matching technology and geolocation data, which has been used before to find and arrest those using the app. Just Futures Law wrote to Hysen earlier this year, questioning the fairness of using an algorithm to assess whether someone is a flight risk and raising concerns over how much data SmartLINK collects. Such AI systems, which score or screen people, are used widely but remain largely unregulated even though some have been found to discriminate on race, gender or other protected traits. DHS said in an email that it is committed to ensuring that its use of AI is transparent and safeguards privacy and civil rights while avoiding biases. The agency said it is working to implement the Biden administration's requirements on using AI, but Hysen said in his letter that security officials may waive those requirements for certain uses. Trump has publicly vowed to repeal Biden's AI policy when he returns to the White House in January. "DHS uses AI to assist our personnel in their work, but DHS does not use the outputs of AI systems as the sole basis for any law enforcement action or denial of benefits," a spokesperson for DHS told the AP. Trump has not revealed how he plans to carry out his promised deportation of an estimated 11 million people living in the country illegally. Although he has proposed invoking wartime powers, as well as military involvement, the plan would face major logistical challenges -- such as where to keep those who have been detained and how to find people spread across the country -- that AI-powered surveillance tools could potentially address. Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for Trump, did not answer questions about how they plan to use DHS' tech, but said in a statement that "President Trump will marshal every federal and state power necessary to institute the largest deportation operation" in American history. Over 100 civil society groups sent a letter on Friday urging the Office of Management and Budget to require DHS to comply with the Biden administration's guidelines. OMB did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Just Futures Law's executive director, Paromita Shah, said if immigrants are scored as flight risks, they are more likely to remain in detention, "limiting their ability to prepare a defense in their case in immigration court, which is already difficult enough as it is." SmartLINK, part of the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program, is run by BI Inc., a subsidiary of the private prison company The GEO Group. The GEO Group also contracts with ICE to run detention centers. ICE is tight-lipped about how it uses SmartLINK's location feature to find and arrest immigrants. Still, public records show that during Trump's first term in 2018, Manassas, Virginia-based employees of BI Inc. relayed immigrants' GPS locations to federal authorities, who then arrested over 40 people. In a report last year to address privacy issues and concerns, DHS said that the mobile app includes security features that "prohibit access to information on the participant's mobile device, with the exception of location data points when the app is open." But the report notes that there remains a risk that data collected from people "may be misused for unauthorized persistent monitoring." Such information could also be stored in other ICE and DHS databases and used for other DHS mission purposes, the report said. On investor calls earlier this month, private prison companies were clear-eyed about the opportunities ahead. The GEO Group's executive chairman George Christopher Zoley said that he expects the incoming Trump administration to "take a much more aggressive approach regarding border security as well as interior enforcement and to request additional funding from Congress to achieve these goals." "In GEO's ISAP program, we can scale up from the present 182,500 participants to several hundreds of thousands, or even millions of participants," Zoley said. That same day, the head of another private prison company told investors he would be watching closely to see how the new administration may change immigrant monitoring programs. "It's an opportunity for multiple vendors to engage ICE about the program going forward and think about creative and innovative solutions to not only get better outcomes, but also scale up the program as necessary," Damon Hininger, CEO of the private prison company CoreCivic Inc. said on an earnings call. GEO did not respond to requests for comment. In a statement, CoreCivic said that it has played "a valued but limited role in America's immigration system" for both Democrats and Republicans for over 40 years.

Surveillance tech advances by Biden could aid in Trump's promised crackdown on immigration

President-elect Donald Trump will return to power next year with a raft of technological tools at his disposal that would help deliver his campaign promise of cracking down on immigration -- among them, surveillance and artificial intelligence technology that the Biden administration already uses to help make crucial decisions in tracking, detaining and ultimately deporting immigrants lacking permanent legal status. While immigration officials have used the tech for years, an October letter from the Department of Homeland Security obtained exclusively by The Associated Press details how those tools -- some of them powered by AI -- help make life-altering decisions for immigrants, including whether they should be detained or surveilled. One algorithm, for example, ranks immigrants with a "Hurricane Score," ranging from 1-5, to assess whether someone will "abscond" from the agency's supervision. The letter, sent by DHS Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer Eric Hysen to the immigrant rights group Just Futures Law, revealed that the score calculates the potential risk that an immigrant -- with a pending case -- will fail to check in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. The algorithm relies on several factors, he said, including an immigrant's number of violations and length of time in the program, and whether the person has a travel document. Hysen wrote that ICE officers consider the score, among other information, when making decisions about an immigrant's case. "The Hurricane Score does not make decisions on detention, deportation, or surveillance; instead, it is used to inform human decision-making," Hysen wrote. Also included in the government's tool kit is a mobile app called SmartLINK that uses facial matching and can track an immigrant's specific location. Nearly 200,000 people without legal status who are in removal proceedings are enrolled in the Alternatives to Detention program, under which certain immigrants can live in the U.S. while their immigration cases are pending. In exchange, SmartLINK and GPS trackers used by ICE rigorously surveil them and their movements. The phone application draws on facial matching technology and geolocation data, which has been used before to find and arrest those using the app. Just Futures Law wrote to Hysen earlier this year, questioning the fairness of using an algorithm to assess whether someone is a flight risk and raising concerns over how much data SmartLINK collects. Such AI systems, which score or screen people, are used widely but remain largely unregulated even though some have been found to discriminate on race, gender or other protected traits. DHS said in an email that it is committed to ensuring that its use of AI is transparent and safeguards privacy and civil rights while avoiding biases. The agency said it is working to implement the Biden administration's requirements on using AI, but Hysen said in his letter that security officials may waive those requirements for certain uses. Trump has publicly vowed to repeal Biden's AI policy when he returns to the White House in January. "DHS uses AI to assist our personnel in their work, but DHS does not use the outputs of AI systems as the sole basis for any law enforcement action or denial of benefits," a spokesperson for DHS told the AP. Trump has not revealed how he plans to carry out his promised deportation of an estimated 11 million people living in the country illegally. Although he has proposed invoking wartime powers, as well as military involvement, the plan would face major logistical challenges -- such as where to keep those who have been detained and how to find people spread across the country -- that AI-powered surveillance tools could potentially address. Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for Trump, did not answer questions about how they plan to use DHS' tech, but said in a statement that "President Trump will marshal every federal and state power necessary to institute the largest deportation operation" in American history. Over 100 civil society groups sent a letter on Friday urging the Office of Management and Budget to require DHS to comply with the Biden administration's guidelines. OMB did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Just Futures Law's executive director, Paromita Shah, said if immigrants are scored as flight risks, they are more likely to remain in detention, "limiting their ability to prepare a defense in their case in immigration court, which is already difficult enough as it is." SmartLINK, part of the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program, is run by BI Inc., a subsidiary of the private prison company The GEO Group. The GEO Group also contracts with ICE to run detention centers. ICE is tight-lipped about how it uses SmartLINK's location feature to find and arrest immigrants. Still, public records show that during Trump's first term in 2018, Manassas, Virginia-based employees of BI Inc. relayed immigrants' GPS locations to federal authorities, who then arrested over 40 people. In a report last year to address privacy issues and concerns, DHS said that the mobile app includes security features that "prohibit access to information on the participant's mobile device, with the exception of location data points when the app is open." But the report notes that there remains a risk that data collected from people "may be misused for unauthorized persistent monitoring." Such information could also be stored in other ICE and DHS databases and used for other DHS mission purposes, the report said. On investor calls earlier this month, private prison companies were clear-eyed about the opportunities ahead. The GEO Group's executive chairman George Christopher Zoley said that he expects the incoming Trump administration to "take a much more aggressive approach regarding border security as well as interior enforcement and to request additional funding from Congress to achieve these goals." "In GEO's ISAP program, we can scale up from the present 182,500 participants to several hundreds of thousands, or even millions of participants," Zoley said. That same day, the head of another private prison company told investors he would be watching closely to see how the new administration may change immigrant monitoring programs. "It's an opportunity for multiple vendors to engage ICE about the program going forward and think about creative and innovative solutions to not only get better outcomes, but also scale up the program as necessary," Damon Hininger, CEO of the private prison company CoreCivic Inc. said on an earnings call. GEO did not respond to requests for comment. In a statement, CoreCivic said that it has played "a valued but limited role in America's immigration system" for both Democrats and Republicans for over 40 years.

Surveillance tech advances by Biden could aid in Trump's promised crackdown on immigration

The incoming Trump administration is poised to leverage AI-powered tools, including a "Hurricane Score" algorithm and the SmartLINK surveillance app, to escalate immigration enforcement. These technologies, already employed by the Biden administration, assist in tracking, detaining, and deporting immigrants. Civil rights groups express concerns about fairness and data privacy, while private prison companies anticipate increased demand for their services. President-elect Donald Trump will return to power next year with a raft of technological tools at his disposal that would help deliver his campaign promise of cracking down on immigration - among them, surveillance and artificial intelligence technology that the Biden administration already uses to help make crucial decisions in tracking, detaining and ultimately deporting immigrants lacking permanent legal status. While immigration officials have used the tech for years, an October letter from the Department of Homeland Security obtained exclusively by The Associated Press details how those tools - some of them powered by AI - help make decisions over whether an immigrant should be detained or surveilled. One algorithm, for example, ranks immigrants with a "Hurricane Score," ranging from 1-5, to assess whether someone will "abscond" from the agency's supervision. The letter, sent by DHS Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer Eric Hysen to the immigrant rights group Just Futures Law, revealed that the score calculates the potential risk that an immigrant - with a pending case - will fail to check in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. The algorithm relies on several factors, he said, including an immigrant's number of violations and length of time in the program, and whether the person has a travel document. Hysen wrote that ICE officers consider the score, among other information, when making decisions about an immigrant's case. "The Hurricane Score does not make decisions on detention, deportation, or surveillance; instead, it is used to inform human decision-making," Hysen wrote. Also included in the government's tool kit is a mobile app called SmartLINK that uses facial matching and can track an immigrant's specific location. Nearly 200,000 people without legal status who are in removal proceedings are enrolled in the Alternatives to Detention program, under which certain immigrants can live in the U.S. while their immigration cases are pending. In exchange, SmartLINK and GPS trackers used by ICE rigorously surveil them and their movements. The phone application draws on facial matching technology and geolocation data, which has been used before to find and arrest those using the app. Just Futures Law wrote to Hysen earlier this year, questioning the fairness of using an algorithm to assess whether someone is a flight risk and raising concerns over how much data SmartLINK collects. Such AI systems, which score or screen people, are used widely but remain largely unregulated even though some have been found to discriminate on race, gender or other protected traits. DHS said in an email that it is committed to ensuring that its use of AI is transparent and safeguards privacy and civil rights while avoiding biases. The agency said it is working to implement the Biden administration's requirements on using AI, but Hysen said in his letter that security officials may waive those requirements for certain uses. Trump has publicly vowed to repeal Biden's AI policy when he returns to the White House in January. "DHS uses AI to assist our personnel in their work, but DHS does not use the outputs of AI systems as the sole basis for any law enforcement action or denial of benefits," a spokesperson for DHS told the AP. Trump has not revealed how he plans to carry out his promised deportation of an estimated 11 million people living in the country illegally. Although he has proposed invoking wartime powers, as well as military involvement, the plan would face major logistical challenges - such as where to keep those who have been detained and how to find people spread across the country - that AI-powered surveillance tools could potentially address. Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for Trump, did not answer questions about how the incoming administration plans to use DHS' tech, but said in a statement that "President Trump will marshal every federal and state power necessary to institute the largest deportation operation" in American history. Over 100 civil society groups sent a letter on Friday urging the Office of Management and Budget to require DHS to comply with the Biden administration's guidelines. A spokesperson for OMB said that agencies must align their AI tools with the guidelines by December 1, and that any extensions or waivers of that deadline will be publicly disclosed next month. Just Futures Law's executive director, Paromita Shah, said if immigrants are scored as flight risks, they are more likely to remain in detention, "limiting their ability to prepare a defense in their case in immigration court, which is already difficult enough as it is." SmartLINK, part of the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program, is run by BI Inc., a subsidiary of the private prison company The GEO Group. The GEO Group also contracts with ICE to run detention centers. ICE is tight-lipped about how it uses SmartLINK's location feature to find and arrest immigrants. Still, public records show that during Trump's first term in 2018, Manassas, Virginia-based employees of BI Inc. relayed immigrants' GPS locations to federal authorities, who then arrested over 40 people. In a report last year to address privacy issues and concerns, DHS said that the mobile app includes security features that "prohibit access to information on the participant's mobile device, with the exception of location data points when the app is open." But the report notes that there remains a risk that data collected from people "may be misused for unauthorized persistent monitoring." Such information could also be stored in other ICE and DHS databases and used for other DHS mission purposes, the report said. On investor calls earlier this month, private prison companies were clear-eyed about the opportunities ahead. The GEO Group's executive chairman George Christopher Zoley said that he expects the incoming Trump administration to "take a much more aggressive approach regarding border security as well as interior enforcement and to request additional funding from Congress to achieve these goals." "In GEO's ISprogram, we can scale up from the present 182,500 participants to several hundreds of thousands, or even millions of participants," Zoley said. That same day, the head of another private prison company told investors he would be watching closely to see how the new administration may change immigrant monitoring programs. "It's an opportunity for multiple vendors to engage ICE about the program going forward and think about creative and innovative solutions to not only get better outcomes, but also scale up the program as necessary," Damon Hininger, CEO of the private prison company CoreCivic Inc. said on an earnings call. GEO did not respond to requests for comment. In a statement, CoreCivic said that it has played "a valued but limited role in America's immigration system" for both Democrats and Republicans for over 40 years.

Surveillance Tech Advances by Biden Could Aid in Trump's Promised Crackdown on Immigration

President-elect Donald Trump will return to power next year with a raft of technological tools at his disposal that would help deliver his campaign promise of cracking down on immigration -- among them, surveillance and artificial intelligence technology that the Biden administration already uses to help make crucial decisions in tracking, detaining and ultimately deporting immigrants lacking permanent legal status. While immigration officials have used the tech for years, an October letter from the Department of Homeland Security obtained exclusively by The Associated Press details how those tools -- some of them powered by AI -- help make life-altering decisions for immigrants, including whether they should be detained or surveilled. One algorithm, for example, ranks immigrants with a "Hurricane Score," ranging from 1-5, to assess whether someone will "abscond" from the agency's supervision. The letter, sent by DHS Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer Eric Hysen to the immigrant rights group Just Futures Law, revealed that the score calculates the potential risk that an immigrant -- with a pending case -- will fail to check in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. The algorithm relies on several factors, he said, including an immigrant's number of violations and length of time in the program, and whether the person has a travel document. Hysen wrote that ICE officers consider the score, among other information, when making decisions about an immigrant's case. "The Hurricane Score does not make decisions on detention, deportation, or surveillance; instead, it is used to inform human decision-making," Hysen wrote. Also included in the government's tool kit is a mobile app called SmartLINK that uses facial matching and can track an immigrant's specific location. Nearly 200,000 people without legal status who are in removal proceedings are enrolled in the Alternatives to Detention program, under which certain immigrants can live in the U.S. while their immigration cases are pending. In exchange, SmartLINK and GPS trackers used by ICE rigorously surveil them and their movements. The phone application draws on facial matching technology and geolocation data, which has been used before to find and arrest those using the app. Just Futures Law wrote to Hysen earlier this year, questioning the fairness of using an algorithm to assess whether someone is a flight risk and raising concerns over how much data SmartLINK collects. Such AI systems, which score or screen people, are used widely but remain largely unregulated even though some have been found to discriminate on race, gender or other protected traits. DHS said in an email that it is committed to ensuring that its use of AI is transparent and safeguards privacy and civil rights while avoiding biases. The agency said it is working to implement the Biden administration's requirements on using AI, but Hysen said in his letter that security officials may waive those requirements for certain uses. Trump has publicly vowed to repeal Biden's AI policy when he returns to the White House in January. "DHS uses AI to assist our personnel in their work, but DHS does not use the outputs of AI systems as the sole basis for any law enforcement action or denial of benefits," a spokesperson for DHS told the AP. Trump has not revealed how he plans to carry out his promised deportation of an estimated 11 million people living in the country illegally. Although he has proposed invoking wartime powers, as well as military involvement, the plan would face major logistical challenges -- such as where to keep those who have been detained and how to find people spread across the country -- that AI-powered surveillance tools could potentially address. Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for Trump, did not answer questions about how they plan to use DHS' tech, but said in a statement that "President Trump will marshal every federal and state power necessary to institute the largest deportation operation" in American history. Over 100 civil society groups sent a letter on Friday urging the Office of Management and Budget to require DHS to comply with the Biden administration's guidelines. OMB did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Just Futures Law's executive director, Paromita Shah, said if immigrants are scored as flight risks, they are more likely to remain in detention, "limiting their ability to prepare a defense in their case in immigration court, which is already difficult enough as it is." SmartLINK, part of the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program, is run by BI Inc., a subsidiary of the private prison company The GEO Group. The GEO Group also contracts with ICE to run detention centers. ICE is tight-lipped about how it uses SmartLINK's location feature to find and arrest immigrants. Still, public records show that during Trump's first term in 2018, Manassas, Virginia-based employees of BI Inc. relayed immigrants' GPS locations to federal authorities, who then arrested over 40 people. In a report last year to address privacy issues and concerns, DHS said that the mobile app includes security features that "prohibit access to information on the participant's mobile device, with the exception of location data points when the app is open." But the report notes that there remains a risk that data collected from people "may be misused for unauthorized persistent monitoring." Such information could also be stored in other ICE and DHS databases and used for other DHS mission purposes, the report said. On investor calls earlier this month, private prison companies were clear-eyed about the opportunities ahead. The GEO Group's executive chairman George Christopher Zoley said that he expects the incoming Trump administration to "take a much more aggressive approach regarding border security as well as interior enforcement and to request additional funding from Congress to achieve these goals." "In GEO's ISAP program, we can scale up from the present 182,500 participants to several hundreds of thousands, or even millions of participants," Zoley said. That same day, the head of another private prison company told investors he would be watching closely to see how the new administration may change immigrant monitoring programs. "It's an opportunity for multiple vendors to engage ICE about the program going forward and think about creative and innovative solutions to not only get better outcomes, but also scale up the program as necessary," Damon Hininger, CEO of the private prison company CoreCivic Inc. said on an earnings call. GEO did not respond to requests for comment. In a statement, CoreCivic said that it has played "a valued but limited role in America's immigration system" for both Democrats and Republicans for over 40 years. Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.