WantToKnow.info: Immigration Enforcement Corruption News

DHS Is Hiring Bounty Hunters to Find and Photograph Deported People’s Homes Abroad

Wed, 05 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

US Customs and Border Protection is seeking to hire private investigators to track down deported immigrants and others who have left the United States, and press them into paying the government money, according to records reviewed by WIRED. The work would cover Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala, and potentially other countries. The documents, which cap the so-called Tracing and Payment Recovery Services program at $9 million over the next two years, call for “commercial data verification and physical observation services” to confirm where each person lives. As of July, the Department of Homeland Security, CBP’s parent agency, says it has issued more than $84 billion in fines to immigrants it has accused of failing to depart the United States. Those fines run against people who are still in the country, at $998 a day for up to five years. Some have reached up to $1.8 million. Hasan Shafiqullah, the Legal Aid Society’s immigration supervising attorney, says he’s seen some third-party collection agencies add $500,000 in additional administrative fees on top of the US government’s fees. Immigrants accused of failing to depart have had their tax returns seized, their wages garnished, and their credit scores ruined. DHS promises that it will forgive failure-to-depart fines if people self-deport using the CBP Home app. The waiver does not include a separate $5,130 fee Congress created last year for people ordered removed in absentia and later arrested by ICE.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on immigration enforcement corruption and the disappearance of privacy.

- Wired

ICE Collected Nearly 1 Million People’s DNA Last Year—Including Young Children

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Officers drove Moreno-Mendez to a nearby ICE field office. There, one deportation officer after another approached him with the same demand. Open your mouth. One officer tried to take his fingerprints and swab the inside of his cheek for DNA. He refused. Then another tried. Then a third. Each time, Moreno-Mendez refused. Four days later, Moreno-Mendez was charged with failing to register as a noncitizen and refusing to provide DNA while in federal custody—the latter a misdemeanor. On August 18, 2025, a magistrate judge in Waco found him guilty of each. Moreno-Mendez’s case is part of a sweeping expansion of DNA collection from people held for civil immigration violations—a federal campaign that, backed by the threat of prosecution, funnels the genetic profiles of nearly everyone in ICE custody into an FBI database built for criminal investigations. New research from Georgetown Law's Center on Privacy and Technology estimates that the Department of Homeland Security has become the largest single source of new genetic profiles in the nation's criminal DNA system, with ICE alone potentially adding as many as roughly 920,000 profiles in 2025. The vast majority of people in ICE custody have no criminal conviction. Yet once the DNA profiles of detained people enter the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, law enforcement agencies across the country can compare them against evidence from unsolved crimes.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on immigration enforcement corruption and the disappearance of privacy.

- Wired

ICE’s “less lethal” crowd-control weapons can still be deadly

Thu, 29 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The wave of violence by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection has brought law enforcement’s use of force coming under renewed scrutiny. So-called “less lethal” weapons are drawing criticism because these weapons, especially when misused by law enforcement, still seriously injure and sometimes kill. Kaden Rummler, a 21-year-old in Santa Ana, California, was shot in the face by a federal agent with a less lethal round while demonstrating against the killing of Renee Good, a Minneapolis resident who was killed by Jonathan Ross, a veteran ICE officer. In a video of the California shooting, the officer in question appears to point his weapon directly at Rummler’s face, fracturing his skull and leaving shrapnel in his face, ultimately rendering him blind for life in one eye and with serious injuries. Less lethal weapons refer to a broad category [including] weapons like stun guns, pepper spray and a variety of concussive projectiles. It also includes other crowd dispersal weapons like flashbang grenades and tear gas, the latter of which is banned in war among signatories of the Geneva Convention, but still commonly used by domestic law enforcement in many countries, including the U.S. Many of these weapons still have the potential to kill or maim the people they are deployed against, even in the best of circumstances. And often these weapons are not deployed as they are intended to be, resulting in more serious injury or death.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on non-lethal weapons and the erosion of civil liberties.

- Salon

DHS Launches Massive “Less Lethal” Chemical Weapons Buying Spree

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is set to order a vast arsenal of chemical grenades, sprays, projectiles, and other weapons. CBP will spend up to $50 million on what it refers to as “Less Lethal Specialty Munitions,” a euphemism for weapons intended to merely hurt or disable a target rather than killing them. The agency is looking for a vendor who can supply vast quantities of 123 different types of munitions across 10 different categories, [a] contracting document says. Federal agents’ indiscriminate use of “less-lethal” chemical weapons against the nonviolent demonstrators became a hallmark of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Contract documents show the Department of Homeland Security will continue to stockpile a massive arsenal of tear gases and projectile weapons. Fired at close enough range, so-called less lethal rounds can easily kill or maim their target. Anti-ICE demonstrator Kaden Rummler lost sight in his left eye after he was shot in the face by a federal officer in January. After the Los Angeles Police Department fired one such round directly into the face of another protester last summer, he was injured so seriously that he required surgery and had his jaw wired shut for six weeks. “Distraction devices,” which emit loud sounds, bright lights, or other effects to stun targets, were also on CBP’s wish list, with plans to purchase 13,000 of them.

Note: According to the Associated Press, "more than 119,000 people have been injured by tear gas and other chemical irritants around the world since 2015 and some 2,000 suffered injuries from "less lethal" impact projectiles." For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on government corruption and non-lethal weapons.

- The Intercept

The Government Uses Targeted Advertising to Track Your Location. Here's What We Need to Do.

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In the absence of strong privacy laws, surveillance-based advertising has become the norm online. Companies track our online and offline activity, then share it with ad tech companies and data brokers to help target ads. Law enforcement agencies take advantage of this advertising system to buy information about us that they would normally need a warrant for, like location data. They rely on the multi-billion-dollar data broker industry to buy location data harvested from people’s smartphones. We’ve known for years that location data brokers are one part of federal law enforcement's massive surveillance arsenal. But a document recently obtained by 404 Media is the first time CBP has acknowledged the location data it buys is partially sourced from the system powering nearly every ad you see online: real-time bidding (RTB). As CBP puts it, “RTB-sourced location data is recorded when an advertisement is served.” Apps for weather, navigation, dating, fitness, and “family safety” often request location permissions to enable key features. But once an app has access to your location, it could share it with data. Here are two basic steps you can take to better protect your location data: 1. Disable your mobile advertising ID, and 2. Review apps you’ve granted location permissions to. If you can’t disable location access completely for an app, limit it to only when you have the app open or only approximate location instead of precise location.

Note: The owner of a data broker company once bragged about having highly detailed personal information on nearly all internet users. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy.

- Electronic Freedom Foundation

Federal Agents Are Intimidating Legal Observers at Their Homes: “They Know Where You Live”

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Across the Twin Cities, immigration agents have identified legal observers by name and address, and, in some cases, led them back to their homes after they engaged in lawful monitoring of immigration activity. Legal observers say this pattern of behavior sends a clear and chilling message: The federal government knows who they are and where they live. These encounters are unfolding amid a rapid expansion of federal surveillance capabilities. Immigration authorities have significantly expanded their use of mobile biometric and surveillance tools in recent years. Officers with Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as Customs and Border Protection, for example, can use the smartphone app Mobile Fortify to photograph a person’s face or capture fingerprints in the field and compare them against federal biometric databases. A 2022 report ... found ICE can access driver’s license data covering roughly three-quarters of U.S. adults, including state photo databases that can be searched using face recognition technology. Civil liberties advocates say the growing web of identification tools has enabled federal agents to quickly identify anyone who monitors or protests their actions — chilling protected First Amendment activity and deterring the legal observation of law enforcement. While many encounters described by observers involve surveillance and intimidation, some have escalated into far more dangerous confrontations.

Note: Read our Substack, "A History of Militarized Policing in the US and the Suppression of Dissent Across the Political Spectrum." For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on immigration enforcement corruption and the disappearance of privacy.

- The Intercept

Palantir Gets Millions of Dollars From New York City's Public Hospitals

Sun, 15 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

New York City's public hospital system is paying millions to Palantir, the controversial ICE and military contractor. Since 2023, the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation has paid Palantir nearly $4 million to improve its ability to track down payment for the services provided at its hospitals and medical clinics. Palantir, a data analysis firm that's now a Wall Street giant thanks to its lucrative work with the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence community, deploys its software to make more efficient the billing of Medicaid and other public benefits. That includes automated scanning of patient health notes to “increase charges captured from missed opportunities,” contract materials reviewed by The Intercept show. It's Palantir's work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that is drawing the most protest today. The company provides a variety of services to help the federal government find and deport immigrants. ICE's Palantir-furnished case management software, for example, “plays a critical role in supporting the daily operations of ICE, ensuring critical mission success,” according to federal contracting documents. Palantir's contract with New York's public health care system allows the company to work with patients' protected health information, or PHI. With permission from New York City Health and Hospitals, Palantir can “de-identify PHI and utilize de-identified PHI for purposes other than research,” the contract states.

Note: Listen to an audio clip of Jeffrey Epstein promoting Palantir to Ehud Barak. Read how Palantir helped the NSA spy on the entire planet. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy.

- The Intercept

Blackwater Successor Hunts Immigrants for ICE

Sat, 03 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A military contractor with a lineage going back to the notorious mercenary firm Blackwater will help U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement track down a list of 1.5 million targeted immigrants across the country. ICE inked a deal with Constellis Holdings to provide “skip tracing” services, tasking the company with hunting immigrants down and relaying their locations to ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations wing for apprehension. Contractors will receive monetary bounties in exchange for turning over the whereabouts of specified immigrants as quickly as possible, using whatever physical and digital surveillance tools they see fit. Constellis was formed in 2014 through the merger of Academi, previously known as Blackwater, and Triple Canopy, a rival mercenary contractor. The combined companies and their subsidiaries have reaped billions from contracts for guarding foreign military installations, embassies, and domestic properties, along with work for the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. spy agencies. In 2007, Blackwater mercenaries massacred 14 civilians in Baghdad; several of its contractors serving prison sentences for the killings were pardoned by President Donald Trump in 2020. The government has so far paid Constellis $1.5 million, with the potential for the total to grow to more than $113 million by the contract’s end in 2027. Constellis ... secured a $250 million construction contract at the U.S. military base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, earlier this year.

Note: Erik Prince's Blackwater got caught systematically defrauding the government. Then Blackwater changed its name to Academi and made over $300 million off the Afghan drug trade. More recently, Prince was recruiting ex spies to infiltrate progressive activist groups. Furthermore, the bounty-based approach mirrors a core tactic of the War on Terror, when US forces offered cash rewards for tips that fueled mass detentions in Afghanistan and beyond. This swept up thousands of people who posed no threat and had no ties to terrorism.

- The Intercept

The US Is Now in the Human-Trafficking Business

Tue, 01 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

After deporting 238 Venezuelan immigrants to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador—likely in violation of court orders—the Trump administration has triggered an unprecedented showdown with the judicial branch to defend its ability to deport immigrants without presenting any evidence in court. This deportation effort constitutes a clear assault on civil liberties and due process rights. It also represents an arguably darker milestone: The US government is now in the business of trafficking migrants on the global market. On March 15, the Trump administration struck a $6 million agreement with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele in which the government traded 238 people to be warehoused for a year in the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo—CECOT—the “crown jewel” of Bukele’s deeply antidemocratic domestic security platform. Even after conceding that they illegally deported one Maryland father who had already been granted protected status by an immigration judge, the Trump administration has said it cannot bring him home because he is now in foreign custody—meaning the executive branch is prioritizing its trade relationship with El Salvador over compliance with American law. [The Prisoners] will soon be enlisted in El Salvador’s euphemistic “Zero Idleness” program, an obscure labor regime. There’s a familiar word for forced prison labor: slavery. By effectively subsidizing and populating a modern penal colony, Trump has reignited the international slave trade.

Note: Allegations that the US government is facilitating human trafficking under the guise of immigration enforcement are not new. Health and Human Services (HHS) whistleblower Tara Lee Rodas testified that "the US government has become the middleman in a large scale, multibillion-dollar child trafficking operation that is run by bad actors seeking to profit off of the lives of children.” Watch our Mindful News Brief video on how the US government facilitates child trafficking at the border.

- The Nation

ICE Is Sending People to a Prison in Africa’s Only Absolute Monarchy

Wed, 08 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Eswatini, the landlocked nation formerly known as Swaziland, is Africa’s last remaining absolute monarchy. In May, officials from the US and Eswatini signed a deal that allows the Trump administration to deport people from all over the world to the African nation. A copy of the arrangement I reviewed shows that the United States has agreed to pay Eswatini $5.1 million to take in up to 160 so-called “third-country nationals”—immigrants who came to the US with no ties to the country to which they are being deported. In July, the first five of such men arrived in Eswatini, where they were sent to a maximum-security prison and detained in the country without any clear legal basis. Last weekend, the Trump administration sent 10 more people to the Eswatini prison. None of the 15 men sent to the nation are from Eswatini. But they are now under the authority of its king. The situation is a “legal black hole,” according to Tin Thanh Nguyen, a North Carolina–based attorney who is representing five men from Vietnam and Laos now imprisoned in the African country. As he explained in a statement Monday: “I cannot call [my clients]. I cannot email them. I cannot communicate through local counsel because the Eswatini government blocks all attorney access.” A practice that would have been unthinkable under past administrations is becoming normalized: sending ICE detainees, without due process, to far-flung prisons in countries with notorious human rights records.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on immigration enforcement corruption.

- Mother Jones

Immigration Detention Has Become a Booming Business for Private Prison Giants

Thu, 14 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Amid escalating anti-immigrant rhetoric ... private prison corporations are once again expanding their grip on U.S. detention policy. In fact, today roughly 90 percent of detained immigrants are held in privately operated facilities, the highest share in history. The industry is instead preparing for explosive growth. On recent earnings calls, CoreCivic executives announced plans to triple the number of beds in their facilities within a few months. That would mean an additional $1.5 billion in revenue for the corporation, more than doubling its annual earnings. Meanwhile, growing scrutiny of immigration detention practices has led to reports of abuse, medical neglect, and deaths in custody. Privatization, with the cost-cutting practices that define it, is the structural driver of human rights violations at these facilities. Private prisons corporations are just one piece of the sprawling prison industry. The U.S. carceral system is comprised of a vast and deeply entrenched network of public-private partnerships that make billions from incarceration and detention. Commissary corporations mark-up basic hygiene items like toothpaste or tampons by 300 percent or more. Private healthcare providers routinely deny or delay treatment, contributing to suffering and preventable deaths behind bars. Private food vendors serve meals that are frequently expired or nutritionally inadequate, all in the name of cutting costs and maximizing returns.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on immigration enforcement corruption.

- Truthout

The Military Occupied LA for 40 Days and All They Did Was Detain One Guy

Wed, 16 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Thousands of federal troops have been deployed to Los Angeles since June 7 on the orders of President Donald Trump. The more than 5,000 National Guard soldiers and Marines ... were sent to “protect the safety and security of federal functions, personnel, and property.” In practice, this has mostly meant guarding federal buildings across LA from protests. Since Trump called up the troops on June 7, they have carried out exactly one temporary detainment. The deployments are expected to cost the public hundreds of millions of dollars. Troops were sent to LA over the objections of local officials and California Gov. Gavin Newsom. In addition to guarding federal buildings, troops have also recently participated in raids alongside camouflage-clad ICE agents. “To have armored vehicles deployed on the streets of our city, to federalize the National Guard, to have the U.S. Marines who are trained to kill abroad, deployed to our city — all of this is outrageous and it is un-American,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass [said]. California National Guard soldiers also backed ICE raids on state-licensed marijuana nurseries last week. The troops took part in the military-style assaults on two locations. ICE detained more than 200 people, including U.S. citizens, during the joint operations. One man, Jaime Alanís Garcia, died. Experts say that the introduction of military troops into civilian law enforcement support further strains civil-military relations and risks violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.

Note: According to the Brennan Center for Justice, this use of federal troops for civilian law enforcement is likely illegal under the Posse Comitatus Act because it wasn't "expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress." The systematic militarization of domestic police forces is well-reported, and has been going on for years. Now, the National Guard is increasingly being trained to treat protesters like enemy troops. What happens to civil liberties when civil society is viewed by authorities as a battle-front?

- The Intercept

Border Patrol Wants Advanced AI to Spy on American Cities

Wed, 23 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

U.S. Customs and Border Protection, flush with billions in new funding, is seeking “advanced AI” technologies to surveil urban residential areas, increasingly sophisticated autonomous systems, and even the ability to see through walls. A CBP presentation for an “Industry Day” summit with private sector vendors ... lays out a detailed wish list of tech CBP hopes to purchase. State-of-the-art, AI-augmented surveillance technologies will be central to the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant campaign, which will extend deep into the interior of the North American continent. [A] reference to AI-aided urban surveillance appears on a page dedicated to the operational needs of Border Patrol’s “Coastal AOR,” or area of responsibility, encompassing the entire southeast of the United States. “In the best of times, oversight of technology and data at DHS is weak and has allowed profiling, but in recent months the administration has intentionally further undermined DHS accountability,” explained [Spencer Reynolds, a former attorney with the Department of Homeland Security]. “Artificial intelligence development is opaque, even more so when it relies on private contractors that are unaccountable to the public — like those Border Patrol wants to hire. Injecting AI into an environment full of biased data and black-box intelligence systems will likely only increase risk and further embolden the agency’s increasingly aggressive behavior.”

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on AI and immigration enforcement corruption.

- The Intercept

The alarming rise of US officers hiding behind masks: ‘A police state’

Wed, 25 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Across the country, armed federal immigration officers have increasingly hidden their identities while carrying out immigration raids, arresting protesters and roughing up prominent Democratic critics. Mike German, a former FBI agent, said officers’ widespread use of masks was unprecedented in US law enforcement and a sign of a rapidly eroding democracy. “Masking symbolizes the drift of law enforcement away from democratic controls,” he said. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has insisted masks are necessary to protect officers’ privacy, arguing, without providing evidence, that there has been an uptick in violence against agents. “It is absolutely shocking and frightening to see masked agents, who are also poorly identified in the way they are dressed, using force in public without clearly identifying themselves,” [said German]. “Our country is known for having democratic control over law enforcement. When it’s hard to tell who a masked individual is working for, it’s hard to accept that that is a legitimate use of authority. The recent shootings of two Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota, by a suspect who allegedly impersonated an officer, highlights the danger of police not looking like police. Federal agents wearing masks and casual clothing significantly increases this risk of any citizen dressing up in a way that fools the public into believing they are law enforcement so they can engage in illegal activity.”

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on police corruption and the erosion of civil liberties.

- The Guardian (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)

The Mystery of ICE’s Unidentifiable Arrests

Fri, 11 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

On March 12th, Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued a press release about an “enhanced” operation that the agency had conducted the previous week in New Mexico. Forty-eight people were arrested in Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and Roswell. Twenty of them had been “arrested or convicted of serious criminal offenses,” which included homicide, sexual assault, drug trafficking, and shoplifting. Others had committed “immigration violations such as illegal entry and illegal re-entry,” and twenty-one had final orders of removal issued by an immigration judge. On March 16th, the New Mexico chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union filed a complaint with two oversight agencies within the Department of Homeland Security: the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman. “ICE has not identified any of the 48 individuals,” the letter said. “ICE has not indicated where any of them are being detained, whether they have access to counsel, in what conditions they are being held, or even which agency is holding them.” In the past two and a half months, ICE has ended a long-standing policy discouraging arrests at schools, places of worship, and hospitals; its officers have also allegedly entered residences without warrants, arrested U.S. citizens by mistake, and refused to identify themselves while whisking people away on the streets of American cities.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on immigration enforcement corruption.

- New Yorker

Can I Teach the First Amendment If I Only Have a Green Card?

Wed, 02 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Starting this week, I once again have the privilege of teaching law students about the First Amendment. I am in the United States on a green card, and recent events suggest that I should be careful in what I say—perhaps even about free speech. The Trump administration is working to deport immigrants, including green-card holders, for what appears to be nothing more than the expression of political views with which the government disagrees. These actions ... make it difficult to work out how to teach cases that boldly proclaim this country is committed to a vision of free speech that, right now, feels very far away. In recent weeks, the Trump administration has been—is there any other way to describe it?—rounding up dissidents. To more easily chase down people with ideas it dislikes, the government is asking universities for the names and nationalities of people who took part in largely peaceful protests and engaged in protected speech. Exactly what kind of expression gets you in trouble is not clear—no doubt that’s partly the point. [Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Troy] Edgar repeatedly refused to answer [NPR journalist Michel] Martin’s simple question: “Is any criticism of the United States government a deportable offense?” A 2010 Supreme Court decision upheld a law banning certain forms of speech that are classified as “material support” to foreign terrorist groups—in that case, the speech included training designated groups on how to pursue their aims peacefully. But even in that case, which upheld a stunningly broad speech restriction, the Court also insisted that ... advocacy of unlawful action is protected so long as it is not done in coordination with terrorist groups. This ... rests “at the heart of the First Amendment”: “viewpoint discrimination is uniquely harmful to a free and democratic society.”

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on censorship and immigration enforcement corruption.

- The Atlantic

An ICE Contractor Is Worth Billions. It’s Still Fighting to Pay Detainees as Little as $1 a Day to Work.

Wed, 19 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The for-profit prison company GEO Group has surged in value under President Donald Trump. Its stock price doubled after Election Day. But despite its soaring fortunes, the $4 billion company continues to resist having to pay detainees more than $1 a day for cleaning facilities where the government has forced them to live. At the 1,575-bed detention center GEO runs for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Tacoma, Washington, detainees once prepared meals, washed laundry and scrubbed toilets, doing jobs that would otherwise require 85 full-time employees, the company estimated. The state’s minimum wage at the time was $11 an hour. (It’s now $16.66.) In 2017, Washington sued GEO to enforce it, and in October 2021 a federal jury ruled unanimously in the state’s favor. This year, GEO and Washington are back in court — for a third time — as the company tries to reverse the earlier decision that sided with the state. Mike Faulk, a spokesperson for the Washington state attorney general’s office, said testimony in the minimum-wage issue highlights the problem with housing detainees in private prisons: profit motive. Not only did GEO pay $1 a day for cleaning in Tacoma, it budgeted less than $1 per meal that each detainee ate, one kitchen worker testified. “So the grade of food is abysmal,” Faulk said of the detainee’s testimony. “He routinely picked out grasshoppers/insects from the food.” Conditions in Tacoma are worsening as the number of detainees rises.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corporate corruption and immigration enforcement corruption.

- ProPublica

Meet the ICE Contractor Running Deportation Flights

Thu, 20 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Business is booming for Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) top deportation flight contractor. On February 28, ICE posted a previously unreported notice that it would award a no-bid contract to CSI Aviation to remove immigrants via flights. The contract is worth up to $128 million and will last for at least six months beginning on March 1, and possibly extend up to a year. ICE modified this contract last Friday to increase the number of ICE removal flights. The recent no-bid contract is the latest of numerous awards in the company’s history with ICE, amounting to a combined total of at least $1.6 billion in federal funding since 2005, although business has especially surged in recent years. CSI has long worked with ICE to remove immigrants using planes, working with a network of subcontractors such as GlobalX. Last year, 74% of ICE’s 1,564 removal flights were on GlobalX planes. In late 2017, 92 Somali immigrants on a CSI-contracted plane were forced to stay shackled for nearly two days. For about 23 hours, the plane simply sat on a tarmac, and the immigrants were not allowed off. “As the plane sat on the runway, the 92 detainees remained bound, their handcuffs secured to their waists, and their feet shackled together,” according to a lawsuit. “The guards did not loosen the shackles, even when the deportees told them that the shackles were painful because they were too tight, that their arms and legs were swollen and were bruised. When the plane’s toilets overfilled with human waste, some of the detainees were left to urinate into bottles or on themselves,” the lawsuit states.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corporate corruption and immigration enforcement corruption.

- Project on Government Oversight

ICE Wastes $16M on Guantanamo Bay Operation as All Migrants Returned to US

Thu, 13 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In January, President Donald Trump announced plans to detain up to 30,000 immigrants suspected of being in the U.S. illegally at Guantanamo Bay ahead of deportation as part of his hard-line crackdown. Trump said he was signing an executive order "to instruct the departments of Defense and Homeland Security to begin preparing the 30,000-person migrant facility at Guantanamo Bay." 41 migrants were at the Guantánamo Bay base awaiting deportation, nearly evenly divided between low and high threat levels. All have since been flown to Alexandria, Louisiana, on non-military aircraft on Tuesday and Wednesday, where they are being held at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) processing facility, according to a U.S. official who spoke to ABC News. California Democrat Rep. Sara Jacobs toured the facilities on Friday as part of a bipartisan delegation from the House Armed Services Committee. Jacobs told ABC News that officials at Guantanamo Bay said it cost $16 million to stand up the migrant camp, noting that each tent allegedly cost $3.1 million to construct, despite not being up to DHS standards. U.S. officials told ABC News the tents did not comply with ICE's requirements for migrant detention, including provisions for air-conditioning and other amenities. Some of the hundreds of U.S. troops sent to Guantánamo Bay to prepare the base for housing migrants may be reassigned to assist with the southern border mission in another capacity.

Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on immigration enforcement corruption.

- Newsweek

The US held migrants at Guantanamo before. Is Trump’s approach different?

Tue, 11 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Donald Trump administration has started sending flights of undocumented migrants in the United States to Guantanamo Bay. The US has ... previously used a Guantanamo Bay camp to detain certain migrants, but Trump’s use is different, immigration experts have said. On January 29, Trump signed a memo directing the departments of defence and homeland security to expand the Migrant Operations Centre at Guantanamo Bay to “provide additional detention space for high-priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States”. Historically, the US has used Guantanamo Bay to hold migrants stopped at sea. Now, Trump is sending people who were detained on US soil. Trump says he plans to detain 30,000 people. That many people haven’t been detained at Guantanamo Bay since the 1990s. Migrants at Guantanamo Bay lack “access to basic human necessities, appropriate medical care, education, and potable water,” the [International Refugee Assistance Project] said in [a] report. Migrants don’t have access to unmonitored calls with lawyers and can’t candidly speak about poor conditions at the naval base. “The US government intentionally uses Guantanamo in hopes of avoiding oversight and the public eye, which makes the facility ripe for abuse,” [interim senior policy director at the International Refugee Assistance Project Hannah] Flamm said.

Note: Explore our comprehensive news database on the dark history of Guantanamo Bay. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on immigration enforcement corruption.

- Al Jazeera

Kids as young at 8 are drugged and trafficked into the US by smugglers posing as their parents, Border Patrol warns

Tue, 24 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Border Patrol agents are warning that kids as young as 8 are being drugged and smuggled into the US by traffickers posing as their parents or family members — and nobody knows how common the horrifying practice is. Authorities have rescued children caught up in two different instances of such smuggling in recent weeks — including one instance in which the alleged traffickers had birth certificates for multiple kids to whom they weren’t related, according to the Border Patrol. Authorities say it’s not clear what is happening to the children once they are smuggled into the US — but many are vulnerable to being exploited for child labor and child sex trafficking. “Sometimes we encounter criminal actions so horrendous, they defy human decency,” said Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol chief of California’s El Centro sector in the southeast of the state, in response to the case. In one case, border agents rescued a child at the California border who had been “heavily dosed with sleep aids to prevent him from talking” to authorities, Bovino said Friday. Those agents found that the traffickers had birth certificates for more children. Under the Biden-Harris administration, the number of children crossing illegally into the US alone and without relatives has skyrocketed. Thousands of those children have also gone unaccounted for after they’ve been released to sponsors, who whistleblowers say aren’t properly vetted, in the US.

Note: Why is this horrific issue not being discussed on a significant mainstream level? According to a report by The Center for Public Integrity, thousands have disappeared from sponsors' homes after the federal government placed them there. Watch our Mindful News Brief video on how the US government facilitates child trafficking at the border.

- New York Post

Department of Homeland Security may have lost track of thousands of unaccompanied migrant children

Thu, 22 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) may have lost track of thousands of children who immigrated to the country as unaccompanied minors, imperiling both the children’s safety and the effectiveness of the immigration process, an internal watchdog report found. Between 2019 and 2023, more than 32,000 unaccompanied minors failed to show up for their immigration court hearings, and ICE was “not able to account” for all of their locations, according to a report from the ICE inspector general’s office. During that period, more than 448,000 unaccompanied children overall immigrated to the US and were transferred from ICE custody to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the agency responsible for placing them with a sponsor or in foster care. Once they were handed off to HHS for settlement, ICE couldn’t determine all of these children’s locations, and more than 291,000 of the kids were not placed into removal proceedings because ICE had never served them notices to appear or scheduled a court date for them. "Without an ability to monitor the location and status of [unaccompanied migrant children], ICE has no assurance [they] are safe from trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor," Inspector General Joseph Cuffari wrote in the report. ICE agreed with some of the report’s recommendations to incorporate more automated tracking mechanisms, but argued the watchdog had “misunderstandings about the process.”

Note: Watch our Mindful News Brief video on how the US government facilitates child trafficking at the border. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on immigration corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.

- The Independent (One of the UK's Leading Newspapers)

Vulnerable and Voiceless—The Ongoing Failure to Protect Unaccompanied Migrant Children

Tue, 13 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In 2015, my career with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency led me to step forward as a whistleblower, exposing a grave issue—the placement of unaccompanied migrant children with inadequately vetted sponsors. Since 2012, Homeland Security officials have released over 730,000 children they encountered to Health and Human Services (HHS) for placement with sponsors. This year alone, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data, nearly 95,000 unaccompanied migrant children have been encountered at the border. Each of these numbers represents a vulnerable life. The crux of the issue lies in our inadequate vetting processes for sponsors. Despite my whistleblowing efforts in 2015 that briefly led to policy changes, we've regressed. Children continue to be placed with potentially dangerous sponsors, exposing them to risks of trafficking, abuse, and neglect. This is not a partisan issue; it's a moral imperative that transcends political affiliations. Despite the gravity of this crisis, it's important to note that Congress is not meaningfully acting on the problem. Senator Chuck Grassley ... revealed that the HHS had placed children with sponsors connected to MS-13, a notorious international criminal gang, and even with individuals suspected of involvement in human trafficking rings. The trafficking of minors across our borders has become a dark and lucrative business, and our failure to adequately safeguard these children makes us complicit.

Note: This article was written by former U.S. Army Captain Jason Piccolo. Watch our Mindful News Brief video on how the US government facilitates child trafficking at the border. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on immigration corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.

- Newsweek

Biden admin whistleblowers claim ‘billions of taxpayer dollars’ used by gov contractor to traffic children on the border

Tue, 09 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Biden administration’s Office of Refugee Resettlement failed to vet sponsors responsible for caring for unaccompanied children apprehended crossing the border, whistleblowers told Senators Tuesday, describing several cases of apparent human trafficking involving the minors and their sponsors. [Whistleblower Deborah] White revealed that she and her colleague, Tara Rodas, first discovered a case of trafficking involving minors crossing the border in June 2021, but even after reporting it, “children continued to be sent to dangerous locations with improperly vetted sponsors.” “Children were sent to addresses that were abandoned houses or nonexistent in some cases,” White said. “In Michigan, a child was sent to an open field, even after we reported making an 911 call after hearing someone screaming for help, yet the child was still sent. When I raised concerns about contractor failures and asked to see the contract I was told, ‘You’re not gonna get the contract and don’t ask for it again.’” White ... described the case of a 16-year-old girl from Guatemala, whose sponsor claimed to be her older brother. “He was touching her inappropriately. It was clear her sponsor was not her brother,” Rodas said, noting that the girl “looked drugged” and as if “she was for sale” on her sponsor’s social media postings. The sponsor had other social media accounts containing child pornography, according to Rodas, explaining that it keeps her up at night.

- New York Post

Government complicit in migrant child trafficking: Whistleblower

Tue, 09 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Three Republican U.S. senators and federal whistleblowers raised alarm over the government’s alleged complicity in human trafficking at the nation’s southern border. The New York Times [reported that] Health and Human Services could not reach more than 85,000 children between 2021 and 2023, adding that DHS and HHS leaders refused to attend the roundtable. Deborah White, who worked in Health and Human Services’ Unaccompanied Child Program, joined those senators in calling for justice. “Make no mistake, children were not going to their parents. They were being trafficked with billions of taxpayer dollars by a contractor failing to vet sponsors and process children safely, with government officials complicit in it,” White said at the roundtable. White began working at HHS’ Pomona, California, Office of Refugee Resettlement site in 2021, where she said she saw hundreds of children sent to unknown fates. “What I found there was horrifying and shocking, as I made [the] initial discovery at the site that children were actually being trafficked,” White told NewsNation. The last time HHS published a report on sexual abuse and sexual harassment among unaccompanied minors was in 2017. “We don’t know what happens to them afterwards, right? We never hear from them again,” White said. “Once they leave HHS or our custody, they wipe their hands of it. They’re not concerned with what’s happening to them once they leave. They’re supposed to do 30-day wellness calls, but … when they did 30-day wellness calls, the case managers were finding that the children were not anywhere to be found in most cases.”

- News Nation

DOJ says largest housing provider for migrant kids engaged in pervasive sexual abuse

Fri, 19 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Employees of a Texas-based nonprofit that provides housing to unaccompanied migrant children repeatedly subjected minors in its care to sexual abuse and harassment, the Department of Justice (DOJ) alleged in a new lawsuit. From 2015 through at least the end of 2023, multiple employees at Southwest Key Programs, the country’s largest private provider of housing for unaccompanied children, subjected unaccompanied children in their care to “repeated and unwelcome sexual abuse, harassment, and misconduct,” the lawsuit said. Minors housed in its shelters were subjected to severe sexual abuse and rape, solicitation of sex acts, solicitation of nude photos and entreaties for sexually inappropriate relationships, among other acts. The children range in age from as young as five years old to teenagers just shy of eighteen years old. Southwest Key employees allegedly discouraged children from reporting abuse, in some cases threatening them and their families. One report describes a Southwest Key Youth Care Worker who repeatedly sexually abused a five-year-old girl, an eight-year-old girl and an eleven-year-old girl. He entered their bedrooms in the middle of the night to touch their “private area,” and threatened to kill their families if they disclosed the abuse, according to the lawsuit. The company has come under scrutiny before. Videos from Arizona Southwest Key shelters in 2018 showed staffers physically abusing children.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on immigration corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.

- The Hill

How the United States Arms the Mexican Cartels

Tue, 16 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Project Gunrunner [was] a nationwide initiative launched in Laredo, Texas, in 2005, which sought to reduce the smuggling of firearms across the U.S. southern border. But while the primary tactic of Gunrunner was the interdiction of buyers and sellers who were violating the laws, [ATF] agents in Phoenix had other plans. They wanted to see where the guns went if they were allowed to cross the border — to follow the small fish until they caught bigger ones. Agents named their operation “Fast and Furious,” after the popular movie about car racing. Between September 2009 and December 2010, a joint task force comprised of federal officials from ATF, FBI, DEA, and ICE, working under the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Arizona, let over two thousand guns “walk” to Mexico. The murder that made the flawed operation public and political in the United States was of an American citizen on US soil: the killing of US Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. Though the investigators could not identify the specific gun that fired the bullet, two AK-47 style WASR-10 rifles were recovered at the scene. Both were traced to ... one of the straw purchasers the agents were monitoring under the Fast and Furious operation. ATF agents who shared their experiences during interviews conducted by a congressional committee admitted they knew that the only way they would learn the whereabouts of the guns they let go would be when Mexican law enforcement recovered them at crime scenes.

Note: Read more about the thousands of illegal guns American officials allowed into Mexico during Operation Fast and Furious. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.

- Rolling Stone

Border Patrol Agents Joked About Killing Migrant Children, Records Show

Tue, 30 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

U.S. Border Patrol agents freely used the derogatory slur “tonk” to describe unauthorized migrants on government computers, at times while joking about killing or beating them, according to emails and text messages disclosed to HuffPost under the Freedom of Information Act. The documents, from 2017 to 2020, reveal yet another instance of the Border Patrol’s use of a slang term that officials in Washington have condemned but have struggled to stamp out. This is the second disclosure that Border Patrol personnel used the word in internal communications since HuffPost first requested a global search of its use among Border Patrol agents four years ago. The origin of the term is uncertain, but most insiders believe it comes from the sound made by bashing an arrested migrant’s head with a government-issued flashlight. Some of the records reference that origin story, with one agent writing: “ah, savor the sound.” Use of the term remained surprisingly common among both rank-and-file agents and those in leadership positions, the records show. Many agents appeared to use the term as a synonym for unauthorized migrants, with little apparent derogatory intent. But the slur often appeared alongside expressions of raw contempt for the people whom Border Patrol officers police. Border Patrol agents who used the slur at times gloated about migrants’ misfortunes or made references to beating them. In one instance, agents joked about killing migrant children in their custody.

Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.

- Huffington Post

Biden administration admits flying 320,000 migrants secretly into the U.S. to reduce the number of crossings at the border has national security 'vulnerabilities'

Mon, 04 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Joe Biden's administration has admitted transporting migrants on secret flights into the U.S. and lawyers for its immigration agencies claim revealing the locations could create national security 'vulnerabilities'. Customs and Border Protection has refused to disclose crucial information about a program last year arranging flights for thousands of undocumented immigrants from foreign airports directly to U.S. cities. While record numbers of migrants were flowing over the southern border last year, the Biden White House was also directly transporting them into the country. Use of a cell phone app has allowed for the near undetected arrival by air of 320,000 [migrants] with no legal rights to enter the United States. Included in details of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit first reported by Todd Bensman, the Center for Immigration Studies found Biden's CBP approved the latest secretive flights that transported hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants from foreign countries into at least 43 different American airports from January through December 2023. The program was part of Biden's expansion of the CBP One app, which kicked off at the start of last year. [Migrants] who cannot legally enter the U.S. use CBP One to apply for travel authorization. Migrants are able to remain in the U.S. for two years without obtaining legal status and meanwhile are eligible for work authorization.

Note: Read the full in-depth report by the Center for Immigration studies here. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption from reliable major media sources.

- Daily Mail (One of the UK's Popular Newspapers)

Whistleblower tells Congress that govt is delivering migrant children to human traffickers

Wed, 26 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

A whistleblower who viewed first-hand what she testified is a "sophisticated network" of child migrant smuggling into forced labor and other forms of slavery is calling on Congress to act to crack down on the U.S. role in that network. The hearing, "The Biden Border Crisis: Exploitation of Unaccompanied Alien Children," was held by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security and Enforcement and included Health and Human Services (HHS) whistleblower Tara Lee Rodas as a witness. Rodas, who was detailed with HHS at an Emergency Intake Site in Pomona, California, ... told lawmakers about what she experienced on the ground. "I thought I was going to help place children in loving homes. Instead, I discovered that children are being trafficked through a sophisticated network that begins with recruiting in their home country, smuggled to the U.S. border, and ends when [Office of Refugee Resettlement] delivers a child to a sponsor — some sponsors are ... members of Transnational Criminal Organizations. Some sponsors view children as commodities," Rodas said. The number of unaccompanied alien children (UACs) who arrive at the border has swelled from 33,239 in fiscal year 2020 to more than ... 152,000 in fiscal year 2022. "The U.S. government has become the middleman in a large scale, multibillion-dollar child trafficking operation that is run by bad actors seeking to profit off of the lives of children," Rodas said.

Note: Why is this horrific issue not being discussed on a significant mainstream level? According to a report by The Center for Public Integrity, thousands have disappeared from sponsors' homes after the federal government placed them there. For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing news articles on government corruption and sexual abuse scandals from reliable major media sources.

- Fox News