Chapter 1: What happened to Emily when she followed an ICE vehicle?
A couple of months ago in Minneapolis, a woman named Emily was following an ICE vehicle around to keep tabs on it. We're only using her first name because she fears retribution from the federal government. Emily told NPR that on this particular day, the vehicle she was following came to an abrupt stop.
I stopped as well and I waited. And then someone leaned out of the passenger side of that SUV.
A masked federal agent leaned out of the window, took a picture of her car and a picture of her.
As I tried to leave, the SUV like flipped around and suddenly sped directly towards me. And I thought that they were going to T-bone me, like deliberately run right into my driver's side door. But right before they hit me, they braked really hard.
Female agent rolled down the window and leaned out and addressed Emily by name.
And she yelled, Emily, Emily, we're going to take you home. And she looked at her phone and it looked like she was reading off my address. Like she recited my home address.
Emily says she has no idea how they pulled up her information so quickly.
Their message was not subtle, right? They were, in effect, saying, we see you, we can get to you whenever we want to. And it did scare me.
The Department of Homeland Security has told NPR, quote, there is no database of, quote, domestic terrorists run by DHS. Congressman Lou Correa, a Democrat from California, asked DHS Secretary Kristi Noem about it during a hearing in the House yesterday.
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Chapter 2: How does ICE's surveillance impact U.S. citizens?
NPR's Jude Joffe Block and Meg Anderson have been digging into this, and they are joining us now. Hey there.
Hello. Hi.
So Meg, I want to start with you. Tell us what you have heard from people who have had interactions with immigration officers.
Yeah. So let me tell you about the experience of one person that really illustrates what we found. Her name is Elle, and Pierre is not using her last name because she's worried about retaliation from the federal government. She lives in Minneapolis, and she told us about following ICE around her neighborhood to document their actions.
They would just get out their phones and then come and stand right in front of my car and take pictures of me and take pictures of our license plates. And they frequently would come up to my vehicle and pound on the glass. Once, she said she was following ICE officers and realized that they were driving her to her own home. She felt like the officers were trying to intimidate her.
We collected dozens of accounts like this, both through interviews and court documents and in other states beyond Minnesota, too.
Okay, so those are the tactics that people are seeing in person. Jude, let me ask you, what do we know about how technology is being used to do things like this?
Yeah, well, in these cases of observers who are driving to document ICE and then agents know their names and like in Elle's case, know where they live. License plate data seems to be a big part of how these agents are figuring out who the car is registered to. And there's a few ways ICE can get this information. And one is that data brokers buy up this data from state DMVs and sell it to ICE.
This technique is also being used on immigrants, too. Agents are looking up license plates they can see on the road or in parking lots to identify whether the car is registered to someone who could be deported.
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