Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are using incredibly invasive surveillance technology as part of their continued efforts to target and tear apart communities across the country. They’re doing so in near-total secrecy and without any public accountability.
The ACLU has been
asking ICE and CBP for basic information about this program for years, and now
we’re asking a federal court to intervene.
In October 2019, Univision reported that an ICE deportation officer used
a Stingray — a surveillance device that secretly mimics a cell-phone tower — to
track down an immigrant suspected of “unlawful reentry” into the country. Little
is publicly known about the use of Stingrays in ICE and CBP immigration
enforcement operations, but we know they’ve used the technology repeatedly.
Stingrays, also known as cell-site
simulators, track and locate cell phones — and the people using them. Pinging
away as they are carted around in unmarked vehicles by law enforcement
agencies, these devices ensnare not only a suspect’s cell phone, but innocent bystanders’
phones as well.
The use of powerful,
surreptitious surveillance equipment is concerning in any context, and all the
more so when done by ICE and CBP — agencies with a long history of abusive
surveillance practices that include unlawfully tracking journalists and advocates and subjecting people to invasive
searches of their electronic devices at the border. And when those agencies use
these tracking technologies in secret, stonewalling our requests for
information, we should all be concerned.
That’s why today the
ACLU and the New York Civil Liberties Union have filed a lawsuit asking a
federal court to order CBP and ICE to produce a range of records about their
use, purchase, and oversight of Stingrays.
Transparency is a
crucial first step to accountability. For more than two years, ICE has been
“processing” our FOIA request for more information on its use of Stingrays. For
its part, CBP has claimed that they were “unable to locate or identify any
responsive records” — but that’s a completely implausible response. As we’ve
cited multiple times, a December 2016 report from the House Committee on
Oversight and Government Reform discloses that, as of 2016, CBP and ICE had spent
a combined $13 million to purchase and operate at least 92 cell-site
simulators.
The public has a right to know if and how often ICE and CBP are using Stingrays, which were originally intended for use by the military and intelligence agencies, for civil immigration enforcement operations. We also have a right to know if the agencies have taken any steps to protect the privacy of bystanders swept up by Stingrays, whether they inform people in immigration court proceedings when a Stingray has been used against them, and what limits, if any, exist on the use of this technology.
It is only with a
better understanding of how Stingrays are being utilized within the Trump
administration’s immigration enforcement operations that we help ensure people
are being protected from unjustified surveillance and targeting.