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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (May 23, 2014)
3 Street roots May 23, 2014 I U Î i T K F O R W A R D T H IN K IN G BY NATHAN GILLES S T A F F W R IT E R ast month, a ILS. District court ruling in Portland started a chain reaction that’s slowly stripping U.S. | Immigration and Custorfts Enforcement (ICE) of a controversial policing tool. However, from a data-sharing program to a new mobile fingerprinting initiativeymany immigrant rights’ advocates suspect ICE has a few technological tricks up its sleeve — tricks, they say, that violate individual i rights. yy The ruling that so shook up ICE involves the case of Maria Miranda-Olivares v . , Clackamas County. The enforcement tool . the Miranda-Olivares ruling is robbing ICE of is called an 1-247 Detainer, commonly called an ICE hold. _ . ICE holds work, like this: if you’re g arrested and you’re an immigrant, ICE can request your local jail hold you for 48 hours, or long enough for ICE to come pick you up, send you to an ICE detention center, and possibly deport you. This, in effect, is what happened to Portland-are resident B fingerprints, faces and eyeballs. These devices, they say, collect data on individuals before they’re arrested and officially charged with crimes and therefore represent — among others — a clear violation of the right to privacy. Biometric cataloging of immigrants also happens at U.S, borders and airports through a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) program called US-VISIT. The program collects fingerprint data on all international travelers to the U n ite d S ta te s . arrestees, ICE officers used racial profiling when first identifying individuals to stop, handcuff, fingerprint and arrest. “How th at worked in New Orleans,” says Gonzalez, “is ICE agents would literally be roaming th e streets and would stop people [who looked Latino] in parking lots, in grocery stores, at Bible study groups and laundromats, and would stop and finger Equally troubling, A s c o n n ty - f a ils a lt e r t h e i r history in the print them .”-■ say im m ig r a n t rig h ts ICE officers referred to this as “going United States of p o lic ie s , a c tiv is t s n e r v o u s ly advocates, is a new hunting,” according to Gomez’s NOWCRJ testing out new J ICE effort that aw ait ICErs next wave, one report. Gonzalez saysthe scans qualify as technologies on employs mobile that m any suspect w ill warrantless searches conducted without communities that fingerprint readers to Include the Increased use ©I can’t push back... probable cause and represent a clear verify immigrants’ that’s why we see I devices th a t can read violation of the arrestees’ rights. status before they’re “This is a problem. ICE is conducting the use of these arrested. The lin g e rp rin ts, laces, and these arrests based on racial profiling and technologies in program is called the lack of warrants, and they’re still pursuing immigrant and | .... eyeballs» These, devices,, they Criminal Alien deportations against the victims of these impoverished say, collect data on Removal Initiative violations,” says Gonzalez. communities,” says in d ivid u a ls heiore they're (CARI). So is CARI active in Portland? Yes, says Jennifer Lynch of “When [ICE] arrested and o ffic ia lly ICE.. the technology launched CARI, the ICE spokesman for the Seattle field office watchdog group the charged w ith crimes and thing was very hush, Andrew Muñoz confirmed CARI was in Electronic Frontier therefore represent a clear hush. It all happened effect in the Portland-metro area. Muñoz did .Foundation (EFF). behind closed doors,” v io la tio n ©f the rig h t to Lynch’s group says Jacinta Gonzalqz, not elaborate on what this meant in . privacy, f has been tracking an organizer with the i, practice. Maria Miranda-Olivares. “ICE .does not conduct sweeps or raids to law enforcement’s t - , New Orleans In March 2012, Miranda-Olivares was target, undocumented immigrants including ICE’s - . Workers’ Center for arrested for violating a domestic violence indiscriminately. Characterizing the use of devices that ’ restraining order. She was taken to the - Criminal Alien Removal Initiative as read biometrics - unique biological markers Racial Justice (NOWCRJ). Clackamas County Jail where her NOWCRJ is an advocacy group formed to anything other than a strategy to focus» from fingerprints and facial recognition to fingerprints were scanned and shared with protect the rights of immigrant workers existing enforcement resources on .; : iris scans - as a way to track individuals. who helped rebuild New Orleans following an ICE database, which showed she was m apprehending criminal alien fugitives would Lynch says her group has uncovered a Hurricane Katrina. In December 2013, the U.S. illegally. ICE then requested the notbe accurate,” Muñoz wrote in an, e-mail. laundry list of examples where biometric NOWCRJ published a comprehensive report jail hold'her. ' Muñoz turned down Street Roots’ request devices are being used on immigrants in detailing CARI’s activities in the New Jail officers informed Miranda-Olivares for a phone interview with Nathalie Asher, ways the American public would never that even if she made bail, the jail would . Orleans metro ,area. ' tolerate if they were used that same way on director of the Seattle field office. He ICE’s website makes no reference to still be obligated to detain her for ICE. But responded to some, but not all, of our » U.S. citizens. . in her April court ruling, .U.S. Magistrate CARI. questions by email. Judge Janice Stewart wrote the jail was Gonzalez says CARI came to the Street Roots was unable to locate reports attention of NOWCRJ when IGE accidentally Data Before the Crime under no such obligation. similar to -New Orleans in Portland. In fact, included a document mentioning the Stewart ruled ICE holds are just requests many who spoke with Street Roots for this program in a trove of papers following the and county jails are not legally required to In its 2012 study, the EFF reported the story hadn’t heard of CARI. This was true of ■ release of Erhn San Martin Gomez, a honor them, b u t the judge went a step Los Angeles Police Department was using officials at the Multnomah and Washington NOWCRJ member who, on Sept. 11, 2013, further in her, ruling. Stewart ruled these mobile fingerprint scanners to track day County Sheriff’s .Departments and most had his fingerprints scanned before: he was holds were a form of prolonged detention laborers in the city. The workers had not local activists. ; v that violated Miranda-Olivares’ rights. lhe been charged or arrested for crimes prior to arrested in front of his apartment in The Clackamas County Sheriff’s Jefferson Parish outside New Orleans. ruling’s effects spread quickly across having their data collected, raising the Department didn’t return our e-mails or Gomez reported that the officers who Oregon as jail after jail stopped honoring question of the legality of the search, phone calls. arrested him had identified him as being m according to the EFF. , , - ICE holds. Active or not, local immigrant advocates the country illegally after first handcuffing The EFF’s source was the LAPD s own Today, at least 30 Oregon counties \ say they’ve got tiieir eyes on ICE, especially him and then scanning his fingerprints including Multnomah, Washington, and website. The URL cited in the EFF report since the Miranda-Olivares decision. using a portable biometric reader. Soon Clackamas - have stopped honoring ICE “Since ICE holds are no more, I think has since been removed. holds. And roughly 11 Washington state, 16 NOWCRJ started to hear similar reports The EFB has also been tracking use of they [ICE] might go back to the raids of the from others who had been stopped, scanned Colorado, and several California counties the Mobile Offender Recognition and past or will come up with a different and arrested using the devices. Information System, MORIS, a device that have followed suit. . strategy. But we don’t know what that If this all sounds sophisticated and high- But as county jails alter their policies, along with reading faces can also read tech, Gonzalez says it wasn’.t really. activists nervously await ICE’s next move, human irises. The legality oj using facial See ICE, p a g e 7 According to the eyewitness reports of one that many suspect will include the recognition is still in question and hasn’t increased usd of devices that can read been tested in the courts. “W e h a v e a
