The US government has steadily expanded the use of surveillance tools, under the guise of combating fraud, stopping crime or detecting undocumented immigrants, but those same tools have become a digital raid with the potential to subject all Americans to unprecedented scrutiny.

During the video conference: “Expand surveillance on Immigrants: At What Price?” organized by American Community Media (ACoM) analyzed the most recent trends under the Trump administration and the safeguards needed to protect democracy and civil liberties. Nicole Alvarez, senior technology policy analyst at the Center for American Progress, said the Trump administration is using Americans’ sensitive personal information to build a digital surveillance tower that threatens not only immigrant communities but everyone’s privacy rights. “I’m referring to the personal information that people share with the federal government when they apply for benefits, file taxes, register for public services, or interact with agencies in any official capacity.” She gave Social Security numbers, medical records, immigration status, and tax returns as examples. “My report focuses on two major developments driving this digital surveillance. First, the secondary abuse of data. Second, the centralization of federal data systems.”

It established that the Privacy Act of 1974 is the primary law governing how federal agencies handle our personal data, and was created after the Watergate scandal, when Congress realized how easily government data could be used for political purposes.

“At its core, the law states that when information is provided to the federal government, it should only be used for the purpose for which it was given.”

He also indicated that agencies cannot share the information with anyone unless the law allows it in limited circumstances or the individual has given written consent.

“What we are seeing under the Trump Administration is abuse because information given to a federal agency for a specific purpose, like paying taxes, is reused by the same agency, or a different one for another purpose without the consent and permission of the people.”

He maintained that we have seen that the IRS has begun sharing taxpayer data with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to help identify and deport immigrants who have paid taxes in good faith.

“When people submitted their information to the IRS, they did so with the understanding that it would be used only for tax purposes, not for immigration raids, and now that data is being used as a weapon for immigration enforcement.”

He mentioned that the current problem with the memorandum of understanding between The IRS and ICE claim they are seeking this information to find people evading deportation orders, which is a federal crime.

“Unfortunately, we must take their word for it that they are not using it to further an agenda of mass deportations. But yes, the judge is holding that if a valid written request meets the statutory requirements of the exception and criminal investigation, the IRS must share that information, and so it is a very slippery slope and is setting an unfortunate precedent if allowed to go forward.”

He added that this is not happening in a vacuum, as Medicaid enrollment records have reportedly been used to identify immigrants for deportation purposes.

“This is turning health safety nets into a conduit for surveillance and, more generally, is a significant break from traditional norms of privacy and purpose limitation in the use of public data.”

Based on this, he advised remaining cautious with the information they share voluntarily and support efforts at all levels to strengthen transparency, limit data sharing, and create true accountability for how the government handles personal data.

Broad Powers

“In the American Dragnet report published in 2022, we revealed that they use digital surveillance to monitor the lives of most people in the United States,And one of the findings of that report was that ICE has exploited information to hand it over in exchange for essential services.”

So it claimed that when people signed up for water or electricity, the information they provided to the utility companies ended up in the hands of ICE, and likewise, when they applied to the DMV for driver’s licenses, the data they provided also ended up in ICE’s hands.

But in addition to this investigation into the extensive surveillance network that ICE has created by accessing datasets that contained detailed personal information, they investigated how the federal government has expanded genetic surveillance.

“In 2024, we published the genome classification, and this report details the dramatic expansion of a DHS program to take DNA from thousands of people every day. We found that the federal government has been collecting DNA assuming people will commit crimes in the future.”

What happens,” she explained, “is that federal agents collect DNA to create profiles, which are added to a federal law enforcement database called CODIS.

“Law enforcement agencies across the country can search the profiles in this database to identify people who have committed crimes in the past, but we also found that the federal government has championed collecting DNA from immigrants as a way to predict who might commit crimes in the future.”

Social Media Surveillance

Sophia Cope, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that during the first Trump administration, the State Department allowed a question to be added to the visa application that was later added to the ESTA form for travelers, asking for social media profiles used over the past five years.

“The goal is for consular officers to review public social media and evaluate whether a visa should be granted or the ESTA form approved.

He said this affects U.S. citizens, who could be colleagues, family members, or friends of visa applicants, and may not want to speak publicly on certain issues for fear of affecting their loved ones' ability to obtain a visa or of being caught in this surveillance.

“It should be noted that the government has not said it is not monitoring people on social media, but the current Trump administration is not only monitoring the social media of visa applicants to the United States, but also those of non-citizens, primarily student visa holders currently in the United States.”

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