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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element"> <font
size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="https://medium.com/nodigitalprisons/how-gps-is-playing-a-critical-role-for-ice-e86694d4f4d5">https://medium.com/nodigitalprisons/how-gps-is-playing-a-critical-role-for-ice-e86694d4f4d5</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">How GPS is Playing a Critical Role for
ICE</h1>
August 30, 2019</div>
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<h2>James Kilgore interviews Daniel Gonzalez on the
ever-expanding electronic infrastructure used to
monitor migrants (Part One)</h2>
<p id="457f" data-selectable-paragraph=""><em>In
recent months ICE has been conducting a huge
number of raids, dragging people from their
families, often away from communities where they
have lived for many years. Part of the technology
involved in executing these raids has been the GPS
monitors that shackle more than 40,000 individuals
under the supervision of ICE. Our project, </em><a
href="https://www.challengingecarceration.org/"
target="_blank"><em>Challenging E-Carceration</em></a><em>
(part of the #NoDigitalPrisons campaign) has
sought to better understand how ICE is using these
GPS devices in their attacks on and management of
migrant bodies. Fortunately, we caught up with
scholar Daniel Gonzalez, who has been researching
all this for several years. Our project director,
James Kilgore, had a conversation with Daniel,
which we will be sharing in two parts. Here’s Part
One:</em></p>
<p id="40c4" data-selectable-paragraph=""><strong>James
Kilgore: In your writing you talk a lot about
borders. You seem to be saying that we often have
a simplistic understanding of what a border is in
the 21st century. Can you explain your
understanding of borders?</strong></p>
<p id="8d6e" data-selectable-paragraph=""><strong>Daniel
Gonzalez</strong>: For a long time we have equated
borders with walls and fences. I think this is a
mistake because it leads us to talk about who
belongs in the US in a very limited way. Moreover,
it distracts us from other border sites and
practices. For me, the border is the physical
structures that geographically demarcate a
nation-state <em>and</em> the personnel,
technologies, practices, and knowledge that enforce
immigration and trade policy. More specifically, I
focus on a database infrastructure called
Investigative Case Management (ICM) that connects
all these aspects. ICM — not a wall — is the current
border’s backbone.</p>
<p id="ff13" data-selectable-paragraph="">Looking at
this larger border infrastructure reveals the
border’s investment in managing people inside the
US. Reframing border practices in terms of interior
AND exterior management highlights the historic
relationship between border politics, racism, and
the US’ need for devalued labor. Borders aren’t
always about keeping certain people out; rather they
can also act as supply chains that funnel in and
then monitor a certain kind of (racialized and
right-less) labor. While ICM is new, the kind of
work the border does now isn’t. For example, <a
href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/02/mexico-immigrant-workers-jobs-americans-braceros-history-immigration-214784"
target="_blank">photos</a> from the 20th century <a
href="http://braceroarchive.org/about"
target="_blank">Bracero</a> program show the
US-Mexico border operating like a waiting line:
laborers were allowed in at certain times and under
specific, terminable conditions.</p>
<p id="3fdc" data-selectable-paragraph="">Even back
then migrant laborers were monitored and managed —
from the documentation they needed in order to work,
the border checkpoints they went through, and the
transportation to and from the worksite. At times,
they were even forced to live in labor camps.
However many migrants fought to improve their
conditions and found ways to integrate into US
society. The inability to permanently track and
manage these workers is one of the reasons why the
US government (despite resistance from the
agriculture industry) ended the program in the
mid-1960s. Now, however, the border can constantly
track migrants’ entire lives at home and work. This
ensures a precarious migrant labor force and
guarantees that migrants will be constantly
monitored and managed, limiting resistance and
migrants’ ability to improve their conditions. So,
if a migrant becomes disruptive or if their labor is
no longer needed, then they are easily deportable.
Historically, US borders have always been better at
monitoring migrants than they have been at denying
entry, and focusing on ICM allows us to see how US
border policy is currently creating and securing a
precarious labor force.</p>
<p id="0576" data-selectable-paragraph=""><strong>James:
I am especially interested in electronic
monitoring (EM). From my research, it seems that
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) uses EM
differently than law enforcement and the overall
criminal legal system. Most people under ICE’s
monitoring are not under house arrest, don’t pay
user fees and don’t report to a personal
supervisor like a probation officer. Even though
they are on GPS-enabled monitors that track their
location, they don’t seem to be punished for
traveling away from home. I am not implying that
the use of EM on migrants is not oppressive, but I
want to understand why it is different. Do you
have some ideas on this? I am especially
interested in the ways in which immigrants are
criminalized as a result of this practice.</strong></p>
<p id="217a" data-selectable-paragraph=""><strong>Daniel:</strong>
This is a question of “target population” and how
state institutions understand certain groups of
people. Departments of Corrections and pretrial
authorities employ EM to geographically contain
criminalized people: EM ties people to their houses,
severely and constantly limiting mobility. ICE, on
the other hand, has a different (but not unrelated)
goal — monitoring people’s mobility. DOC uses EM as
an extension of mass incarceration. But ICE doesn’t
want to completely incarcerate a cheap labor force —
it merely wants to keep labor cheap and precarious.</p>
<p id="eb28" data-selectable-paragraph="">ICE also
uses EM to monitor the area that a person is or is
not allowed to enter, but this monitoring usually
allows for greater mobility than monitoring under
DOC. The recent raids suggest that ICE also uses EM
to help track a person or group after it is
determined that they are disruptive, break the law,
use public institutions or services, or when their
labor is simply no longer needed. Then, ICE
intervenes, detains, and deports. Migrants already
enter the US labor force criminalized and with
limited rights, and ICE waits to capitalize on that
precarity.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Migrants already enter the US labor force
criminalized and with limited rights, and ICE
waits to capitalize on that precarity.</p>
</blockquote>
<p id="c69f" data-selectable-paragraph=""><strong>James:
Earlier this month ICE raided seven workplaces in
Mississippi and took nearly 700 workers into
custody. A number of reports indicated that ICE
made use of GPS tracking of location to target
workers in the plant. Can you explain how that
might have worked and tell us whether this is
common practice?</strong></p>
<p id="cf59" data-selectable-paragraph=""><strong>Daniel:</strong>
Electronic monitoring is a GPS and data-collection
technology (often wearable) that records and sends a
person’s life-activity patterns — including
location-based data — to central
information-processing centers, like<a
href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/04/why-fusion-centers-matter-faq"
target="_blank"> DHS Fusion Centers</a>. In these
centers local, state, and federal agencies ensure
the coordination of information and plan action
across government institutions. ICE uses this
information to make operative decisions, such as
locating people who miss a routine check-in. In
large-scale raids, however, ICE already has a goal:
it is not just responding to a specific infraction;
ICE also uses EM data to plan the logistics of the
raid.</p>
<p id="457b" data-selectable-paragraph="">Considering
the frequency of these large-scale workplace raids
and the increase in funding DHS spends on these
surveillance and information technologies, I think
that GPS is playing a critical role for ICE and may
play an even larger role in the future. The
SmartLINK smartphone app that ICE in Miami is
currently using, for example, has taken EM to
another level by combining GPS and facial
recognition.</p>
<p id="5459" data-selectable-paragraph="">It’s also
important to keep in mind that the use of GPS to
monitor migrants in the workplace is not new. DHS
funding documents on prototypes from the early 2000s
indicate that employer information was also
networked into this migrant management system. These
prototypes integrated <a
href="https://www.ice.gov/video/championing-ice-community"
target="_blank">community-based support programs</a>
(noncitizen sponsorship) with EM and provided
ICE-contracted caseworkers with access to
workplaces, encouraging a conflation of interest
between ICE and employers.</p>
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<p id="5d36" data-selectable-paragraph=""><em>James
Kilgore is a Media Fellow at Media Justice. He
directs the Challenging E-Carceration project as
part of the #NoDigitalPrisons campaign and was a
2017 Soros Justice Fellow. He is the author of
five books, including the award-winning </em><a
href="https://thenewpress.com/books/understanding-mass-incarceration"
target="_blank"><em>Understanding Mass
Incarceration:A People’s Guide to the Key Civil
Rights Struggle of Our Time.</em></a><em> In his
community of Champaign-Urbana, Illinois he is
Co-Director of FirstFollowers Reentry Program.</em></p>
<p id="d2ad" data-selectable-paragraph=""><em>Daniel
Gonzalez is a PhD candidate in the Department of
Geography and Geographic Sciences at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His
research focuses on the science and technologies
of racial capitalism, particularly as they pertain
to regimes of US border enforcement and
immigration management.</em></p>
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