How AI is aiding Trump's immigration crackdown

The Department of Homeland Security and other immigration control agencies are using a suite of AI tools as part of the crackdown on alleged illegal immigration.

The United States under President Donald Trump is ramping up use of surveillance systems and artificial intelligence (AI) to track and arrest immigrants, raising fears that risks to accuracy and privacy could put almost anyone in danger of getting caught up in the crackdown.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other immigration control agencies are using a suite of AI tools — such as facial recognition scanners in public areas and robotic dogs patrolling the southern border for human movement — as part of the crackdown on alleged illegal immigration.

Many of the AI tools that immigration agents are using have been in place for years and are a legacy of previous administrations, according to Saira Hussain, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights advocacy group.

But now these tools have "a ramped-up scope in terms of who [they are] targeting," and a wider range of people will have access to the data these tools collect, Hussain said.

The pumped-up surveillance dragnet also includes services run by private contractors like Babel Street, which trawl immigrants' social media accounts to collect personal information.

Once that information is collected, agencies like DHS and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) use it to track locations of immigrants, map out their family trees and justify arrest warrants and deportation decisions.

An example of the widening scope is the government’s new “Catch and Revoke” program, launched under Secretary of State Marco Rubio in March.