ICE Can Already Sidestep Sanctuary City Laws Through Data-Sharing Fusion Centers

On the run way and successful caller days, Donald Trump has elaborate extensive plans for migration crackdowns and wide deportations during his 2nd word arsenic United States president. These initiatives would, helium has said, see assertive operations successful areas known arsenic “sanctuary cities” that person laws specifically curtailing section instrumentality enforcement collaboration with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

With these promises looming, a caller report from researchers astatine the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP), a pro-privacy nonprofit, details the ways that federal/local data-sharing centers known arsenic “fusion centers” already effect successful practice betwixt national migration authorities and sanctuary-city instrumentality enforcement.

Run by the US Department of Homeland Security, of which ICE is simply a part, fusion centers emerged successful the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks arsenic a counterterrorism inaugural for integrating quality betwixt federal, state, and section instrumentality enforcement. Fusion centers spent $400 cardinal successful 2021, according to nationalist records. And, arsenic STOP researchers constituent out, successful much than 2 decades the centers person ne'er proven their worthy for their stated intent of addressing coercion successful the US. Unnamed DHS officials told a Senate sheet successful 2012, for example, that fusion centers nutrient “predominantly useless information” and “a clump of crap.”

In summation to assertive investigative tactics similar pulling information from schools and termination clinics, ICE agents person leaned connected fusion centers for years to get everything from photos of suspects to license sheet determination data and more—often successful a pipeline that includes input from instrumentality enforcement moving successful sanctuary cities.

“This is an country wherever it’s highly profitable for localities to cooperate with ICE, and due to the fact that it’s not highly disposable it oftentimes faces little pushback," says STOP enforcement manager Albert Fox Cahn. “This benignant of accusation sharing capableness connected this standard crossed each these agencies. tapping into everything from section inferior records and DMV records to schoolhouse records has the imaginable to beryllium deployed successful immoderate fig of chilling scenarios.”

ICE did not instantly instrumentality a petition from WIRED for comment.

Fox Cahn adds that the conception of sanctuary cities wasn't ever viewed by determination cops arsenic an inconvenience to enactment around. “Until precocious a batch of instrumentality enforcement agencies were precise vocal successful supporting sanctuary metropolis protections, due to the fact that they feared that ICE collaboration would really wounded nationalist information if immigrants were not consenting to travel guardant erstwhile they were victims of a transgression oregon witnesser to a crime,” helium says. “But constabulary person go overmuch much politically engaged connected migration successful caller years.”