Good Morning Madeline,
I believe LexisNexis may be an example of a vendor enabling the targeting and surveilling of immigrants. I recently read a TechCrunch (June 2022) article that mentioned,
"Today the company states on its FAQ page for the contract that "Immigration and Customs Enforcement does not use the technology to track individuals that may have committed minor offenses. It is strictly used for identifying individuals with serious criminal backgrounds." In other words, it is ostensibly used to confirm that an individual does in fact have a real criminal record, something that would be a legal and ordinary barrier to immigration.
This stated purpose seems at odds with the enormous volume of searches being conducted by ICE, far beyond the highest imaginable numbers for serious criminal background checks. It also doesn't square with the fact that nearly a quarter of those 1.2 million queries were performed by the Enforcement and Removal Operations division, which as you might expect is responsible for deportations and raids. Since the data available includes "real time" information like phone use, it's certainly tactically useful for their needs."
| Far from using LexisNexis strictly to check for those with "serious criminal backgrounds," ICE has been using it to perform searches in the millions. techcrunch.com |
Thank you,
Sam