Congressional Letter: Defund ICE Surveillance now!
A pdf of this letter is linked here.
Dear Members of Congress,
Our government should not spy on us, yet right now ICE agents are leveraging a multi-billion dollar budget to terrorize our communities and build a surveillance panopticon.
There is a clear path to stop ICE surveillance in its tracks and also reject the executions of Renee Good, Silverio Villegas Gonzalez, and Keith Porter, as well as the deaths of many other people who were shot or died in custody over the past year.Lawmakers need to block funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and with it, funding of surveillance tech and other tools ICE is deploying against people in the US to deprive them of their privacy and liberty.
A major part of the $170 billion in funding that ICE has received from the Trump Administration is being leveraged to supercharge ICE violence and intimidation using surveillance tech. DHS, ICE, and CBP are:
- Building databases of biometrics, sensitive personal data, and daily movements of not only immigrants, but everybody in the US. ICE is also using Palantir’s app ELITE to determine which neighborhoods to raid.
- Tapping into a nationwide network of insecure & dangerous Flock automatic license plate readers and Amazon Ring doorbell cameras that when combined can track any resident’s movements in essentially real time.
- Purchasing technology to surveil all the phones in a neighborhood without a warrant. This includes exact location data of where a phone is located and where it has traveled in the past.
- Recklessly relying on facial recognition technology that is banned in some states, and misusing that data to intimidate protesters and witnesses by revealing that the ICE agent knows personal details of people exercising their First Amendment rights.
- Preparing to purchase and deploy AI drones that may be weapons-capable.
Lawmakers must act immediately to stem the tide on ICE violence and the technology and data spending that help it spread. The best thing that Congress can do to protect targeted communities is to block any DHS funding bill that includes money for ICE. The second best thing Congress can do is to severely restrict what ICE can spend money on, including a complete moratorium on the purchase and use of surveillance tech. Such a moratorium should include automated license plate readers, access to data broker databases, spyware, drones, facial recognition, phone snooping and surveillance, and social media and internet use trackers.
We urge you to do everything within your power in order to block ICE’s reign of terror in our communities and halt the build out of surveillance tech infrastructure that will make it impossible for everyday people to do anything at all without Big Brother watching. Milquetoast calls for better identification, bodycams, and training fall far short of what is required of you to meet this moment.
Sincerely,
18 Million Rising
Access Now
Arkansas Black Gay Men’s Forum
Black Alliance for Justice Immigration
COLAGE
Common Defense
Community Outreach through Radical Empowerment (CORE)
comun.al
Defending Rights & Dissent
Deflock Olympia
Democratic Socialists of America
Evergreen Resistance
Faith Choice Ohio
Fight for the Future
First Followers Reentry
Indivisible Skagit
Labor Tech Research Network
Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition
Muslim Advocates
Muslims for Just Futures
Next Generation Men of Transition
NTEN
Oakland Privacy
Olympia Indivisible
OpenMedia
PDX Privacy
Petty Propolis, Inc.
Presente.org
ProgressNow New Mexico
Project South
RootsAction
Seattle Immigrant Rights Action Group
Seattle Indivisible
Secure Justice
Skagit DSA
SnohomishImmigrationAdvocacy
Southend Indivisible
SQSH
Surveillance Technology Oversight Project
T-Time Transgender Support
The Constitution Project
UltraViolet Action
United Veteran-Civilian Response
WA People’s Privacy
Wallingford Indivisible
Whatcom Peace and Justice Center
Women’s Health Specialists
X-Lab
Yale Privacy Lab