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Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is reportedly fast-tracking a program designed to expand its domestic surveillance capabilities in dozens of cities across the United States.
Details of the new spy program, entitled the Enforcement and Removal Operations Overwatch and National Security Enforcement, or ERO ONE, were published on a federal website in September. The American Prospect reported on ERO ONE earlier this week.
Around $100 million is expected to be allocated from the Department of Homeland Security to the program, which intends to contract 142 intelligence agents who will be placed in at least two dozen cities throughout the country. Those agents would coordinate with nearby ICE offices, as well as with a central hub located in Washington, D.C.
The published plan doesn’t specify what these agents will do while in the field, but it does indicate that they will analyze classified and nonclassified information to create “network, link, and relationship” analyses. Such research examines not only a specific person, but also their connections — including members of their household, extended family members, friends, and even acquaintances.
The government’s explainer of the program states that agents will “provide research, analysis, evaluation, reporting, coordination, and related intelligence support to ERO ONE headquarters and designated field locations.”
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The document places some restrictions on ERO ONE agents, who will not be allowed to engage in actions such as “arrest, detention, search, seizure, interrogation, inspection, investigative, or other law enforcement authorities.” However, given that ICE agents have repeatedly overreached their own enforcement powers or blatantly lied to residents during enforcement operations, it’s not unreasonable to believe these restrictions could be ignored.
ICE has already expanded its domestic spying capabilities through facial recognition and mobile phone location data software, as well as artificial intelligence (AI) technologies as part of its mass deportation efforts. ICE has also used “zero-click” technology that allows the agency to access encrypted data on an individual’s phone by sending a link to the user that doesn’t require them to click it at all.
Critics warn the new program is not only set to target immigrants in the country, but could be the precipice of a new domestic surveillance paradigm.
“It looks dangerously like the construction of an internal spying agency,” Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, explained to The American Prospect. “It’s a nightmare in the making.”
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