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For some, surveillance levels were frightening. Information on Nicole Ramos, an attorney with immigrant rights advocacy group Al Otro Lado, included “specific details about the car she drives, her mother’s name, and her work and travel history.” Following the release of the report, House Democratic leaders are pressing Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan for explanations.
“The appearance that CBP is targeting journalists, lawyers, and advocates, and particularly those who work on immigration matters or report on border and immigration issues, raises questions about possible misuse of CBP’s border search authority and requires oversight to ensure the protection of Americans’ legal and constitutional rights,” said Reps. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi and Kathleen Rice of New York. The Department of Homeland Security Office of the Inspector General is already probing the database. The government claims the database was created to help investigate alleged incidents at the border, but the people targeted are crying bullshit. Reported San Diego’s NBC affiliate, “Of the journalists on the list NBC 7 spoke with, only one said he was even at [a border] incident in November.”
Hugo Castro, a U.S. citizen and volunteer with advocacy group Border Angels, said he was interrogated at the border for over five hours.
But the American citizen says officers primarily asked him general questions about the caravan of migrants coming from Guatemala and Honduras, how he was getting paid and what his organization’s role was in assisting migrants.
Castro said he was not asked about specific clashes.Immigration officials have become Trump’s own police, along with Immigration and Customs Enforcement also tracking his critics. Just weeks after his inauguration, unshackled agents stalked a Dreamer who had spoken out against mass deportation. “The tools the President is using are nothing short of chilling,” said Douglas Rivlin of immigrant advocacy group America’s Voice, “from watch lists of activists and journalists to double-speak and deception that would make George Orwell blush.”
Report: ICE Tracked NYC Anti-Trump Protests
Activists march against Immigration and Customs Enforcement across the street from the ICE offices in New York on June 29. (photo: Drew Angerer/Getty)
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anti-Trump sentiment reached a fever pitch last summer, Immigration and
Customs Enforcement began monitoring and tracking left-wing protests in
New York City, according to documents cited in a Wednesday report from The Nation.On July 31, The Nation reports, ICE sent an email to a group of recipients that included a Department of Homeland Security supervisor with an attached document called “Anti-Trump Protest Spreadsheet 07/31/2018.”
The four-page document reportedly listed the “time, date, location and purpose” of protests and rallies between July 31 and August 17, and also tracked the groups that organized them and the number of people that had RSVP’ed on Facebook. The tracked actions were largely pro-immigration events; the only right-wing protest that made the list was reportedly marked as a “counter-protest.”
In a statement to The Nation, ICE attempted to downplay the seriousness of the list, claiming that “The referenced email was provided to HSI agents for situational awareness should any HSI employees be travelling (sic) through those areas, whether on work or personal time.”
But the tracked organizers believe there’s something more sinister about the list: “If [the Department of Homeland Security] is specifically focusing on those who are against the current president, it gets into the realm of what fascist regimes do,” one volunteer organizer said. “If they are watching us because we are against the current president’s policies, it is more than a little disturbing.”
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