ICE's Data Grab: A New Era of Mass Deportation Surveillance

From IRS files to airline itineraries, the Trump administration is building a surveillance web to track noncitizens—and citizens—sparking fears of profiling and mass privacy violations.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is pulling out all the stops to ramp up deportations, and it’s doing so by casting a massive digital net over every corner of American life. Through an unprecedented expansion of data-sharing, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is tapping into federal, state, and local databases to track noncitizens—and, alarmingly, a whole lot of U.S. citizens too. From tax records to voter rolls, the administration’s aggressive push to access sensitive personal data is raising red flags among advocates and privacy experts alike. Here’s what you need to know about this quiet but seismic shift in immigration enforcement.