Title is misleading. ICE is actually two organizations under a single umbrella. There’s Enforcmenet and Removal Operations (which is what people commonly associate with ICE) and there’s Homeland Security Investigations. The article is about HSI. HSI doesn’t “track immigrants” (that’s the ERO), they track criminals. Smugglers, people traffickers, etc.

The author makes reference to ICE using these techniques to find "unauthorized immigrants", which seems to be just another softer term for "illegal immigrant".

If we want to progress, we need to recognize countries do have different values and have the right to monitor their borders to limit who can enter based on those values.

When someone chooses to break the law to cross a border and live anywhere without notifying the authorities they have to accept the consequences of that.

I was hoping the arguments here would be about legality of ICE getting access to (private) Facebook data and how users are unknowingly handing over their life.

Executing a search warrant on an individual (assuming criminal) is understandable, but how do you defend - 'the company developed a special system for ICE to access a vast “ecosystem” of data to facilitate immigration officials in both discovering targets and then creating and administering cases against them.'

This sounds like violation of 4th amendment rights. Also, how is this any different than surveillance?

Further these tools could be used in targeting a particular group(s) of people. 1. It appears to be a framework that creates list of people that can be targeted. 2. Then they request almost any data to Facebook and Facebook hands it over promptly 3. Then they 'administer cases' based on this data.

At this moment, this entire apparatus is targeting 'illegal immigrants'

Since we know the intentions of this administration (see. Executive order on Muslim ban), it would be very hard to imagine that this apparatus will not be misused. Remember that immigrants don't get a fair trial. (Old article '09 - http://www.nbcnews.com/id/29706177/ns/us_news-security/t/imm...)

'The report reveals that from January 2017 through June 2017, Facebook received 32,716 requests for data from 52,280 users. Facebook notes in its report that it complied with 85 percent of the requests and “approximately 57% of legal process we received from authorities in the U.S. was accompanied by a non-disclosure order legally prohibiting us from notifying the affected users.”'

32k requests for 52k users, sounds like a bulk data request potentially being served to Facebook. This is in line with the FISA fiasco that happened few years ago.

Facebook is unfortunately complicit in creation of any 'lists' (I do realize that Facebook is in itself a list)

Overall, the rhetoric (in this case anti-immigrant) coupled with unfettered access to Facebook data and palantir data analytics are digital weapons that can be/are used to target large swaths of people.

People were afraid of 'knock down the door style mass deportations', apparently all they have to do is ask Facebook for help.