Mobile fingerprinting – the collection of apps used by US immigration officials to conduct remote on-the-spot checks – has become a “core tool” in deporting undocumented immigrants from the US, two immigration rights groups say in a new report based on a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The mobile fingerprint app, used for remote ground-based searches, has “become a central tool in the deportation efforts of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE),” two of the two groups behind the report say. Mobile fingerprint systems used to deport US immigrants by using them for “remote” on-the-spot checks have become “a key method of deportation for illegal immigrants in the American immigration system,” according to a recent report based on a lawsuit over the Freedom of Information Act and a report by the Center for Immigration Studies (CISA).
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Documents seized in a 2017 trial show that the app, called EDDIE, helped deport migrants who should not be deported on purpose, the report said.
Such people are often held as collateral in operations against others, activists wrote in Monday’s report. The use of the app exacerbates racial profiling of immigrant communities, it said. In 2017, state internal newsletters and documents described how immigration officials used the apps as part of Operation 333, a continuing crackdown on illegal immigration. Operation 333 – illegal arrests of foreigners – was limited to a period of 12 months, according to the report, which offers little additional context.
The fact that mobile fingerprints are routinely used by US immigrants and border agents is part of a biometric data collection system that the Trump administration has been trying to expand in recent weeks. A regulation proposed by the Department of Homeland Security on September 11 would formalize the fingerprint data now collected and allow agents to conduct interrogations in public and conduct bookings, she said.
ICE spokesman Mike Alvarez rejected the allegations, saying, “There is no evidence that the abuses are taking place there.”
The use of the mobile app, coupled with Bluetooth-enabled fingerprint readers, does not replace bookings made in local offices. The app allows field workers to remotely compare the fingerprints they collect with those registered in DHS and FBI databases. But courts have questioned the reliability of federal databases when used as the sole basis for arrest decisions. Even if the authority did not collect such data, it was not known whether the use would increase the number of safeguards.
In an extraordinary pandemic that began in March, border guards have used mobile fingerprint devices to help with immediate deportations to Mexico without giving migrants a chance to claim asylum. The EDDIE app can be accessed from a mobile phone or tablet, according to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Lawyers Guild, which claims that DHS’s collection and disclosure of biometric data makes non-citizens vulnerable to civil rights and data breaches. Documents show location data and time stamps were collected and used to arrest more than 1,000 people in a single day in July and August.
ICE agents use the app when they issue a deportation warrant or try to fingerprint a detainee, he said. Agents are doing the same thing in targeted apartments, “he said, according to the lawsuit. O’Neill said migrants have a right not to be fingerprinted under the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) law.
ICE spokesman Alvarez said it was voluntary, but activists said the behavior of immigration officials often contradicts that claim. Immigration officials used such deceptive tactics to break into homes and pretend to be police officers, it said.
President-elect Joe Biden’s campaign has taken up the data collection and promised to undo it. The Biden transition team did not respond to a request for comment, his campaign said in a statement on its website on Wednesday.
The Trump administration will quickly implement the proposed expanded biometric records before leaving office on January 20, Biden said. The rules could effectively subject non-citizens, including children, to a “permanent surveillance regime” that Biden’s team could find difficult to dismantle, he added.