This week at Unbreaking, November 6
The government shutdown is officially the longest on record, but things are far from quiet. This week, our team has a major update on the intersection between data security and immigration. In addition, we have two smaller updates: In workforce news, there was a new ruling in a key California lawsuit. On October 28, a judge indefinitely blocked the layoffs of roughly 4,000 federal employees let go during the shutdown, noting the human toll these layoffs have already taken. And over on our medical research funding page, we published a brand new timeline tracking all the events that inform our understanding of this critical issue.
For months now, we’ve seen the expansion of a violent and unaccountable federal police force under the aegis of immigration enforcement, and this week, the way that enforcement threatens and interacts with data security is our biggest story. We’re tracking how federal agencies are using facial recognition software in the streets and vastly expanding mandatory biometric data collection for immigrants and their US connections — including by taking DNA from both adults and young children.
Thanks to 404 Media’s reporting, we know that DHS’s deployment of the Mobile Fortify face-scanning app is troubling for multiple reasons:
- The app is built on unaccountable technology that can generate false matches and exploits unverified datasets never intended to be combined or used to determine who is in the US lawfully.
- There is no way for people approached by DHS (including US citizens) to opt out of being scanned, and the app will store images for 15 years.
- According to a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, DHS considers Mobile Fortify “definitive” proof of immigration status, superseding birth certificates and other previously authoritative documentation.
Taken with DHS’s proposed biometrics data-grab and earlier efforts to consolidate and weaponize personal data, this expansion of shoddy, unaccountable, and invasive technology signals that immigration enforcement may be the leading edge of a true — and openly racist — surveillance state. You can find these events and more in our Data Security timeline.
And elsewhere in immigration:
- The Trump administration purged ICE field office directors and planned to replace them with leaders from the even more aggressive Customs and Border Patrol division.
- Brutal immigration raids continued in Chicago, Los Angeles, and other US cities, along with enduring protests and community protection efforts.
- In California, federal immigration agents shot a 25-year-old US citizen who tried to warn them away from schoolchildren arriving at a bus stop.
- The Trump administration cut the number of refugees the US will accept from 125,000 (last year) to 7,500 — less than half of the lowest previous limit — and stated that it will give preference to white Afrikaners.
- Federal judges held off National Guard deployments in Chicago and Portland. Judge Sara Ellis’s staredown with DHS over its routine violence in Chicago has culminated, for now, in a preliminary injunction against their use of force.
We recorded these events and more in our chronological Immigration timeline.
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