As the legislative session comes to a close, the threat of detention and deportation continues for our immigrant neighbors. Legislators have the opportunity to take swift action towards ending the surveillance state that infringes on New Yorkers’ privacy and enables law enforcement abuse as the state recovers from the pandemic and works to reverse decades of racial injustice. By passing legislation to ban rogue DNA databases, ban law enforcement use of biometric surveillance technology and end collaboration between law enforcement and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), New York can prevent police and ICE from using these tools to criminalize New Yorkers.
Historically targeting communities of color, including immigrants, surveillance and policing are emboldened by new technological tools and leave our communities even more vulnerable. Local law enforcement agencies and federal agencies like ICE rely on a wide variety of surveillance tools with little to no oversight. This includes facial recognition technology, automated license plate readers and social media surveillance, among others. The agency even relies on utility data for its operations. While New York State itself cannot change ICE’s practices, it can inhibit the tools the agency has at its disposal.
Simultaneously, New York has the opportunity to end the threat of rogue DNA databases. As opposed to the state’s central DNA index, other local DNA databases across the state are unregulated. These databases, like the one that holds DNA collected by the NYPD, overwhelmingly represent Black and Brown New Yorkers who the police most target, contain DNA samples collected in deceitful ways and have led to wrongful arrests. Moreover, the possibility that ICE has access to this biometric data threatens the safety and privacy of immigrant New Yorkers.
In addition to DNA, DHS has also increasingly relied on other forms of biometric surveillance, including iris scans, voiceprint verification and facial recognition. While we advocate against all uses of biometric surveillance technology, it is particularly threatening in the hands of police. For example, the NYPD continues to abuse facial recognition technology. Recent reports found that at least 50 NYPD officers tested Clearview AI, a private facial recognition company that scrapes images from social media that ICE also has a contract with, on their personal devices. Other reports have revealed that the department has manipulated photos to attempt to find matches. The technology is also extremely biased, misidentifying people of color in particular. It has already led to the wrongful arrest of at least three Black men and likely many more. A ban on law enforcement use of this technology is a necessary start to limiting ICE’s access to biometric data of our immigrant communities.
Finally, New York is safer if ICE, law enforcement, and other government agencies are not collaborating to detain and deport immigrants using local and state resources. The chilling effect ICE has created remains in New York through continued raids and deportations, leaving community members in paralyzed fear. When ICE’s immigration enforcement mission conspires with a criminal legal system that polices and incarcerates Black, Brown and Indigenous communities, the injustices are multiplied. At a minimum, New York must prohibit local and state law enforcement from collaborating and sharing information with ICE and make it clear that ICE cannot access non-public areas of government property without a judicial warrant.
Our communities should not be criminalized and surveilled, period. Before this year’s session ends, legislators must act to ban the use of rogue DNA databases, ban law enforcement use of biometric surveillance technology and end law enforcement collaboration with ICE.
Panjwani is the policy and advocacy manager at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.). Chapa is the senior policy associate at the Immigrant Defense Project.