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Poll everyone you can. Even the most MAGA never dreamed up this scenario. There’s no single-issue voter whose kink is “surely the people wanting green cards can get that done in their own countries.”
Nope, this is Trump’s kink. This is a blatant attempt to juice the deportation numbers to soothe the throbbing bald skull of Stephen Miller, who still has yet to see his 3,000 arrests per day bigoted fantasy become reality, no matter how many billions we’re (forced to) throw at ICE.
This is just blatant racism masquerading as slightly-less-blatant racism. The law was never unclear. The system wasn’t being exploited by immigrants. Pretty much everyone has always been fine with the US’s green card program. And yet, this is what America means now, just as it heads into its 250th year.
Foreigners in the U.S. who want a green card will need to leave and apply in their home country, the Trump administration announced Friday, in a surprise change to a longstanding policy that sowed confusion and concern among aid groups, immigration lawyers and immigrants.
The obvious question is “WHY?” The obvious answer is this: this administration hates people who aren’t white. If you think this policy might affect the small percentage of migrants from predominately white nations, you’re living in a self-induced psychosis. If you don’t believe me, maybe you’ll believe the words falling out of the administration’s collective mouth:
In an emailed statement to the Associated Press the agency said people who provide an “economic benefit” or “national interest” could likely stay in the U.S. while others would have to go abroad to apply.
No need to read between the lines here. This administration is as unsophisticated as a used Croc. Both terms stated here can be read as “white” and “also white.” If you think this means otherwise, be sure to show your whole bigoted ass in the comment section below.
The “agency” mentioned here is the USCIS (US Citizenship and Immigration Services), which used to be more concerned with ensuring applicants kept on their path to citizenship. That’s no longer the case. It should rebrand as GTFO, since all it does now is give Trump whatever he wants when it comes to expelling non-white people from this nation.
I’m not even exaggerating. More than 90% of successful asylum seekers are white people from other nations. Any actions taken to limit lawful access to citizenship have targeted non-white people. Pretending that living in the US while seeking a green card is the exploitation of a legal loophole is nothing more than more blatant racism from an administration that has already been pretty fucking blatant about its racism.
The fully-suborned USCIS had this to say about a directive I can’t imagine it saw coming:
USCIS described the change as a return to “the original intent of the law” and closing a “loophole.”
Get thee to a white shoe law firm, he said in a Shakepearian voice. Bro, the “original intent of the law” never resulted in a demand to “close” a “loophole” for over FIVE DECADES. To claim it’s imperative NOW is to pretend you’d rather honor the law, rather than the nation’s foremost golf club groundskeeper.
To sum up: get fucked, Trump. This is nothing more than the administration deciding Lady Liberty is free to assault just because she showed a bit of ankle more than 100 years ago.
Filed Under: bigotry, dhs, ice, immigration, mass deportation, trump administration, uscis
By any means, necessary or not: that’s how this administration gets its bigoted version of immigration enforcement done. The surges targeting cities and states that Trump doesn’t feel are loyal enough are a double-edged sword. They punish states run by Democratic party members simply for being run by Democratic party members. And they flood courts with more cases than they can possibly handle, allowing the government to deny rights/deport people at scale.
The government doesn’t always get away with it. But given the scale, the government generally doesn’t get reined in until long after massive amounts of damage has been done.
That’s the case here in Maryland, where a lawsuit, that was initiated shortly after Trump began sending Venezuelans to El Salvador’s hellhole prison for purely punitive reasons, continues to play out. It involves a Venezuelan asylum seeker who was ejected from the country via Trump’s non-wartime invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to excuse the government’s refusal to respect due process rights.
As is the case with many federal judges dealing with Trump’s war on migrants, Maryland federal judge Stephanie Gallagher no longer takes the government at its word. That’s why she has been ordering immigration officials to testify in court, where they can be cross-examined and/or questioned by the judge herself.
And that’s the last thing this government wants, because it can’t even survive the minimal judicial scrutiny of its filed motions, which are usually crafted by teams of lawyers and not by the front-line employees and supervisors judges are ordering to testify.
David Kurtz of Talking Points Memo attended a recent hearing hosted by Judge Gallagher in this long-running case. Gallagher and the plaintiff’s attorney wanted to know why the government seemed to be violating an existing court order when it wrongfully removed two other asylum seekers in February.
What they heard instead was the perhaps inadvertent admission by the government that the three known (and potentially illegal removals) being discussed were pretty much just a rounding error:
Before today, the number of wrongfully deported asylum seekers in the case was thought to be less than a dozen. But under persistent questioning from plaintiff’s counsel, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services asylum officer Kimberly Sicard testified that in the past three to four weeks it had come to her attention that more than 100 asylum seekers covered by the settlement agreement have been removed. She put the number in the “low 100s.”
That’s insane. Those are the actions of a government that truly does not care what illegal acts it engages in so long as they contribute to the end goal of subtracting non-white people from this nation.
And it’s obviously intentional. That much was made clear in Sicard’s testimony.
Asked how the additional removals had come to her attention, Sicard said she wasn’t sure of the exact process but that officials had “queried systems.” As part of the process of notifying ICE of the wrongful removals, the matter went to the office of chief counsel at USCIS three to four weeks ago, Sicard said.
That means the government can query its detention databases in order to prevent possibly illegal removals. It also means the government can find out how many illegal removals it might have engaged in. The “three or four weeks” just means the USCIS chief counsel spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to legally justify illegal removals that now total in the “low hundreds.” And it means all of these things are either rarely used (or, more likely, deliberately ignored) by government agencies that have all been tasked with respecting rights first and carrying out their missions second.
Speaking of ignoring things, this revelation may never have occurred if the government had even attempted to comply with the judge’s previous court order:
The revelation was the pinnacle of a day of frustration for Gallagher. She had listed in her order calling the hearing five topics on which she expected the Trump administration to produce witnesses “with personal knowledge” to testify. The government failed to produce such witnesses.
“Failed” just means “refused” under Trump and his bigoted sidekicks. Because this administration felt this was just another court order it could ignore, someone without “personal knowledge” of the topics under discussion was sent to court to take the heat. And because she wasn’t expected to offer anything but shrugs, the USCIS lawyer responded honestly to questions that apparently weren’t covered by whatever minimal guidance DHS offered before she was put on the stand.
It’s this sort of sloppy arrogance that’s going to continue to derail some of the worst things this administration wants to do. And we’re safe to assume the arrogance and sloppiness will continue, because Trump has made absolutely no effort to rid himself of loyalists, no matter how sloppy, stupid, and undeservedly arrogant they are.
Filed Under: dhs, doj, ice, kimberly sicard, maryland, mass deportations, stephanie gallagher, trump administration, uscis
Well, we always knew it would come to this.
In a blow to the First Amendment and privacy, the Trump administration last week approved a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) plan to collect social media handles from people applying to change their immigration status. The new requirement, which was approved for one year, comes after the administration has openly declared its intent to use social media handles to screen people for speech it dislikes.
That’s from the Brennan Center report published earlier this month. What was once limited to people seeking visas, asylum, or work permits is now being foisted on people who have been here legally for years, including US citizens.
Anyone could have seen this coming. The DHS has gradually expanded its biometric program from targeting foreign arrivals at US airports to pretty much everyone who utilizes an international airport, even while traveling entirely domestically. The end goal is biometric scanners in every US airport for no real reason other than the DHS wants to do this.
This sure as shit doesn’t sound like America:
The more than 3 million people applying each year for immigration status changes — such as seeking work or travel authorization, a green card, or citizenship — will now be required to give the government their social media handles. In some cases, they must also provide the handles of their young children, spouses, and parents, many of whom are U.S. citizens, green card holders, or are otherwise in the United States legally. The new rules will require them to submit any social media handles they have used over the past five years, whether used in a personal or professional capacity or even on behalf of an organization. This covers platforms including Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube as well as messaging services such as WhatsApp, Telegram, and GroupMe.
The underlying message is clear: if you want to live in America, you have to play by the rules the administration sets down. To be part of Trump’s version of the United States, you are expected to constantly run towards goalposts that keep moving deeper into the surveillance state. It’s all very reminiscent of every authoritarian regime that knew the only way to stay in power was to keep increasing the size of the jackboot.
This would be terrible enough in isolation. But this comes on top of the DHS sending subpoenas to tech companies in hopes of unmasking social media account owners who have done nothing more than engage in protected speech. And that’s on top of multiple moves made by the DHS and other federal agencies to nudge people towards engaging in self-censorship or “self-deportation.”
And, just in case you might think the government is too clumsy and inefficient to turn this into the oppression it clearly desires it to be, may I remind you that ICE, CBP, and the DHS itself have access (or are seeking to acquire) multiple forms of always-on social media surveillance tools to keep tabs on what this administration considers to be “anti-American” sentiment. That it’s actually “anti-this-fucking-administration” sentiment makes no difference to the Administrator in Chief, who not only thinks he’s a king, but expects everyone from cabinet members to taxpayers to treat him as one.
If there’s any silver lining here, it’s that this sort of thing doesn’t really work. As the Brennan Center report points out, the administration should already know this. Trump was briefed back in 2016 that social media “vetting” rarely returned anything of value in terms of national security. These findings were reiterated in a report delivered by government officials in 2021, who stated social media disclosure “added no value” to existing vetting efforts.
But things have changed. Trump, in particular, doesn’t actually care whether or not it adds any national security value. He only cares that it might help him hunt down his critics and/or encourage them to speak up less loudly and/or frequently.
In reviving the proposal this year, USCIS said that gathering social media handles is necessary to comply with the administration’s new policy of screening people in the United States for “hostile attitudes” or “hateful ideology” toward Americans or U.S. culture and institutions.
Oh, if only irony meant anything. The people with the most “hostile attitude” towards Americans and American culture and institutions are the MAGA fiends running the nation. This is nothing more than a particularly right-wing take on “better red than dead.” With any luck, this version of the GOP will get kicked to the curb forever, replaced by better people who will never abuse the expansive powers the departing despots leave behind.
Filed Under: 1st amendment, border patrol, cbp, dhs, ice, oppression, social media, surveillance state, trump administration, uscis
We’ve always known the ultimate goal was to subject everyone to biometric collections, whether it’s at border crossings or international airports. At some point, the tech will move inland and become an annoying part of traveling from Point A to B because national security or whatever the fuck.
The acceleration was a bit more limited during the Biden years, but the desire to turn everyone into data points for government exploitation remained. Now that Trump is back in office, what was previously used to track inherently suspicious foreigners (that would be all the ones that aren’t white) will soon be used to track everyone.
This was first pitched by the DHS back in November, as “Papers Please” reports. Public comments are being accepted, but probably not being welcomed unless they’re sufficiently congratulatory of this expansion of surveillance power. Here’s what Papers Please has to say about it in its recent post:
As part of an array of proposals and rules issued by components of the US Department of Homeland Security to collect a widening array of biometric information and systems from widening categories of individuals, US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is proposing a new rule that would authorize collection of any form of biometric information or samples from anyone, including US citizens, “encountered” by USCIS or “associated with” any applicant for admission to the US, US residency, or US citizenship.
The proposed rule would give USCIS blanket authority, at its discretion, to order any such individual to report to any location worldwide specified by USCIS, and to submit to collection of facial images (“digital image, specifically for facial recognition”), fingerprints, palm prints, iris scans, retinal scans, voice prints, and/or DNA samples.
“Associated with” is a pretty broad term — one that could cover any business employing foreigners or any school accepting applicants with student visas. And that’s not Papers Please editorializing the DHS/USCIS proposal. That’s a direct quote of its Federal Register posting:
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) proposes to amend its regulations governing
biometrics use and collection. DHS proposes to require submission of biometrics by any individual, regardless of age, filing or associated with an immigration benefit request, other request, or collection of information, unless exempted; expand biometrics collection authority upon alien arrest; define ‘‘biometrics;’’ codify reuse requirements; codify and expand DNA testing, use and storage; establish an ‘‘extraordinary circumstances’’ standard to excuse a failure to appear at a biometric services appointment; modify how VAWA self-petitioners and T nonimmigrant status applicants demonstrate good moral character; and clarify biometrics collection purposes.
This means family members, friends, immigration lawyers, and the above-mentioned schools and businesses could all be expected to submit their biometric information to the DHS. There’s also the weird thing about “good moral character,” which presumably means someone’s character aligns with the current MAGA leadership, no matter its evident lack of good moral character. It also seeks to codify stuff it’s already doing and expand its power to do more of that same stuff elsewhere for other reasons and under other conditions.
The laundry list of people expected to bring their eyeballs, faces, and fingerprints to the DHS is described in a bit more detail later in the DHS proposal:
Using biometrics for identity verification and management will assist DHS’s efforts to combat trafficking, confirm the results of biographical criminal history checks, and deter fraud. Therefore, DHS proposes in this rule that any applicant, petitioner, sponsor, supporter, derivative, dependent, beneficiary, or individual filing or associated with a benefit request or other request or collection of information, including U.S. citizens, U.S. nationals and lawful permanent residents, and without regard to age, must submit biometrics unless DHS otherwise exempts the requirement.
If you ask me, this is less about a hunger for data than an attempt to dissuade people from assisting migrants, students, or temporary laborers from seeking a path to permanent residence. Our immigration processes have left us largely unaffected by terrorists or international criminal cartels, despite the government’s persistent (and consistently louder) claims otherwise. A vast majority of immigrants are hardworking, tax-paying people who commit fewer crimes than US citizens.
Then there’s this, which says the DHS will now be allowed to track/reject/kick out applicants based on their sexual identity:
Similarly, under this rule, DHS may expressly require, request, or accept raw DNA or DNA test results (which include a partial DNA profile) as evidence to determine eligibility for immigration and naturalization benefits or to perform any other functions necessary for administering and enforcing immigration and naturalization laws. For example, DHS may request DNA evidence to prove or disprove an individual’s biological sex in instances where that determination will impact benefit eligibility.
Neat. As if this whole shit show needed any more Nazi added to it. As was noted above, the public has been invited to comment on this proposal. But I can almost guarantee you the opposition will be ignored in favor of ensuring the GOP has a Fatherland to rule for the foreseeable future.
Filed Under: biometric collection, biometrics, dhs, ice, immigration, mass deportation, mass surveillance, mission creep, privacy, surveillance, trump administration, uscis
This was pretty much inevitable. While the Trump’s band of bigots struggled mightily to expel brown people from this country, the rest of his sycophants are doing everything they can to prevent non-white foreigners from entering the country.
It’s counterproductive, especially when the end goal is at least 3,000 ICE arrests per day. If you don’t let enough migrants in, you’re going to run out of migrants to arrest and deport. It’s simple math, people. But it’s also a simple president, to use the pejorative form of the word.
Marco Rubio’s State Department is doing what it can to filter out people who might be opposed to Trump and/or his policies. Applicants for visas now must subject themselves to vetting that includes deep dives into their social media accounts to sniff out anything slightly smelling of anti-Trump animus. According to Rubio himself, being anti-Trump is the same thing as being anti-America, even though it’s clear Trump has zero respect for everything that actually makes America great.
Apparently, this isn’t working quite as well as Trump or Rubio had hoped. People who don’t like Trump must still be finding a way to enter this country. Not to worry! DHS has just issued guidance that says it can now (or rather, continue) to throw people out because they’re not TEAM USA enough.
In a move that’s completely on-brand for the Trump administration, McCarthyism is now back in play when it comes to allowing migrants to continue accessing rights and benefits that were previously considered to be guaranteed. (h/t Aaron Reichlin-Melnick on Bluesky)
This isn’t hyperbole. It’s excruciatingly literal. The new DHS policy memo [PDF] specifically cites laws created to assist Joe McCarthy’s desire to eject Communists from the country.
For certain immigration benefit requests, such as adjustment of status, the alien bears the burden of proof to demonstrate that a favorable exercise of discretion is warranted.1
[…]
USCIS guidance provides that an alien’s compliance with immigration laws is a relevant factor when determining if a favorable exercise of discretion is warranted. USCIS is updating the Policy Manual to provide additional guidance for officers on the significant negative discretionary weight USCIS assigns in circumstances where an alien has endorsed, promoted, supported, or otherwise espoused the views of a terrorist organization or group, including those who support or promote anti-American ideologies or activities, antisemitic terrorism, antisemitic terrorist organizations, and antisemitic ideologies, in any case involving an exercise of discretion.2
There are two footnotes attached to these statements. Here’s what the first one links to, the establishment of a burden of proof that is placed on the “alien” seeking to stay in the country — a statute that was created during McCarthy’s height of power.
The second footnote links to a law created directly in response to McCarthy’s witch hunt — the title of which suggests fans of Trump might be too un-American to be allowed to seek residence in the United States:
Prohibition upon the naturalization of persons opposed to government or law, or who favor totalitarian forms of government
I mean… it speaks for itself. If there’s been an administration more tolerant of totalitarianism or less supportive of the rule of law, we certainly haven’t seen it since the final days of the Nixon administration. And at least Nixon had the courage to resign during his impeachment, rather than force himself on the nation repeatedly the way ol’ grab-em-by-the-pussy has.
The end result of the exhuming of McCarthyism is this, at least in terms of what DHS/US Citizenship and Immigration Services will do:
In cases where the alien has engaged in such activities, USCIS will enforce all relevant immigration laws to the maximum degree, including the use of discretion, to deny the benefit request.
This certainly doesn’t sound like maximum degree “discretion,” unless your definition of maximized discretion is always finding a reason to block a non-white migrant from continuing to reside in the United States. That is one way to use “discretion,” albeit one that most people wouldn’t consider to be the defining feature of discretionary power.
There is no further clarification as to what DHS/USCIS consider to be un-American enough to reject applications for permanent residence in the United States. It’s all “discretion” from here on out, which means the DHS can use this power to oust anyone it wants to, regardless of any other reasons migrants have cited as justifying their continued residence in the US.
It’s evil, stupid, and cruel. And that means it’s just another part of the complete Trump Administration set. It’s bigotry backed by laws created to appease a bigot who managed to go mainstream seven decades ago. Everything old is new again… well, except for all the old stuff like Lady Liberty serving as a beacon of hope and America behaving like it might actually deserve the title of “Leader of the Free World” now and then.
Filed Under: dhs, ice, mass deportation, mccarthyism, time to deport lady liberty i guess, trump administration, uscis
Once someone legally obtains documents from a government entity through a public records request, the government simply cannot demand to have them returned just because it screwed up when it fulfilled the request.
That unalterable fact hasn’t stopped government agencies from trying (or even [temporarily] succeeding). The NYPD botched its handling of a public records request twice, handing out information it didn’t want to disclose to facial recognition researchers on two separate occasions. Both times, it tried to get a court to help it demand the mistakenly released information be returned. One request was granted (then rescinded). The second time the NYPD screwed up it didn’t even bother to see if a court would oblige it twice.
US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is being sued for trying to do exactly this same thing. It fulfilled FOIA requests pertaining to Hoppock Law Firm clients, sending the firm the “alien files” compiled by the agency. (h/t National Security Counselors)
At the time, the USCIS told Hoppock Law Firm it was aware it was over-fulfilling the request. From Hoppock Law’s lawsuit [PDF] against USCIS:
In the Determination Letter, defendant USCIS wrote that it was intentionally releasing portions of the records that would otherwise be considered “exempt” under the FOIA statute after discussion between agency personnel and a member of its staff. It purported to release this exempt material “as a matter of administrative discretion.” And it said that the released records may also include other “discretionary releases of exempt information.”
These statements confirmed that even if portions of the records released were subject to any exemption under the FOIA, such release was intentional, not inadvertent.
Seven months later, USCIS had a new Director of FOIA Operations. And Hoppock Law had a new letter from USCIS demanding the “return” of information the agency had already voluntarily released.
The Demand Letter stated that, as for request number NRC2021092780, the USCIS had now decided that it had “inadvertently released personally identifiable information of third parties and/or law enforcement sensitive information.” It did not identify what pages or portions of the release the defendants were now claiming to be exempt or address its previous statements that it was releasing exempt information on purpose, as a matter of administrative discretion.
The Demand Letter did not identify any specific statutory exemption under the FOIA statute that the Defendants believed should apply to these records.
Although the request was for Plaintiffs’ client’s own A-file and the records released included only those found in the client’s A-file, the Demand Letter said that “improper use” of the records Plaintiffs received could “harm” the individuals “whose information was mistakenly sent.”
The demand letter [PDF] also hinted the law firm could be subject to criminal charges if it did not immediately comply. The letter claimed that any “any use or disclosure” of information (information not specified in the letter) might “impede or interfere with law enforcement activities.” That’s called obstruction when the feds are bringing charges. And like any federal charge, it’s serious and can result in lengthy sentences.
The letter went on to demand compliance by January 18, 2022, which would be the same day the law firm received the letter. On January 19, the law firm responded, asking USCIS to identify which FOIA request this demand letter covered and noted that it needed other information from the agency if it was even going to begin complying with its demands, including identification of every person and entity the documents might have been shared with.
Despite the implicit threat of criminal charges and the demand for immediate action, the law firm’s questions have yet to be answered. To prevent it from being accused of federal crimes or improper dissemination of sensitive information, the law firm is suing USCIS, seeking an order that would strictly define what the law firm is obligated to do in response to this letter, especially given its implication of criminal charges.
And it points out USCIS has no legal right to demand the things it’s demanding.
The FOIA statute includes no authority for the responding agency to demand that a requester return records it has disclosed under the FOIA or to furnish information to the agency about who has been provided access to those records.
Even if there were some implied claw-back power in the FOIA statute, it would not apply to records the agency has intentionally disclosed, as it said explicitly here in the June 2021 disposition letter.
Because of that, the law firm is also seeking declaratory judgment stating that the demand letter violates FOIA law and that the law firm is under no obligation to comply with an extremely belated letter that, in effect, orders the firm to disclose the names of others who’ve viewed the documents and any attorney-client privileged communications compliance with the letter might reveal.
The law firm should prevail. FOIA law simply does not work this way. And USCIS’s earlier statements that it knew it was providing information normally considered exempt from disclosure shows the agency was fully aware of what it was handing over to the law firm. A change at the top of the FOIA org chart doesn’t suddenly make all of the agency’s past public records actions null and void. And it sure as shit doesn’t change how this law works.
Filed Under: foia, transparency, uscis
Companies: hoppock law firm
As you probably know by now, there are a whole bunch of “alt” or “rogue” government Twitter accounts, initially inspired by what appeared to be tweets from a former National Parks Service employee containing “rogue” information against the Trump administration. Many of those rogue accounts are questionable in nature and likely fake, rather than being actually run by employees of the parts of the government they claim to represent. Still, it appears that many in the government are concerned. Just yesterday, via a FOIA request, it was revealed that Donald Trump himself got “directly involved” in the hunt for the National Park Service’s rogue tweeter:
If you can’t read that, it’s an excerpt from an email saying that “this has become a very sensitive issue, especially since the President has gotten directly involved and contacted Acting Director Mike Reynolds concerned about one of the images…”
It appears that other parts of the government are also deeply concerned with unmasking who’s involved in these things. Today, Twitter sued the US government because the Department of Homeland Security and its Customs & Border Protection division have apparently been trying to unmask the operator of the @ALT_uscis account, which claims to be run by people working for US Citizenship and Immigration Service presenting the “rogue” view on immigration issues.
From the lawsuit:
This is an action to prevent the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (?DHS?), U.S. Customs and Border Protection (?CBP?), and the individual Defendants from unlawfully abusing a limited-purpose investigatory tool to try to unmask the real identity of one or more persons who have been using Twitter?s social media platform, and specifically a Twitter account named @ALT_USCIS, to express public criticism of the Department and the current Administration. The rights of free speech afforded Twitter?s users and Twitter itself under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution include a right to disseminate such anonymous or pseudonymous political speech. In these circumstances, Defendants may not compel Twitter to disclose information regarding the real identities of these users without first demonstrating that some criminal or civil offense has been committed, that unmasking the users? identity is the least restrictive means for investigating that offense, that the demand for this information is not motivated by a desire to suppress free speech, and that the interests of pursuing that investigation outweigh the important First Amendment rights of Twitter and its users. But Defendants have not come close to making any of those showings. And even if Defendants could otherwise demonstrate an appropriate basis for impairing the First Amendment interests of Twitter and its users, they certainly may not do so using the particular investigatory tool employed here?which Congress authorized solely to ensure compliance with federal laws concerning imported merchandise?because it is apparent that whatever investigation Defendants are conducting here does not pertain to imported merchandise.
Specifically, Twitter argues that DHS is abusing particular laws that CBP/DHS has access to, but for a specific purpse — and it’s not to identify rogue employees:
First, the sole statutory authority CBP invoked in issuing the summons?19 U.S.C. § 1509?authorizes the agency to compel production of only a narrow class of records relating to the importation of merchandise. But CBP?s investigation of the @ALT_USCIS account plainly has nothing whatsoever to do with the importation of merchandise into the United States. Section 1509 thus provides CBP no power to compel Twitter to reveal information pertaining to the identity of the individual(s) behind the @ALT_USCIS account.
Further down in the complaint, Twitter notes that it appears that DHS/CBP directly misrepresented what was happening here:
The CBP Summons states generically that ?production of the indicated records is required in connection with an investigation or inquiry to ascertain the correctness of entries, to determine the liability for duties, taxes, fines, penalties, or forfeitures, and/or to ensure compliance with the laws or regulations administered by CBP and ICE.? Beyond that boilerplate language, the CBP Summons provides no justification for issuance of a summons targeting the @ALT_USCIS account.
Amusingly, the lawsuit also notes that CBP demanded Twitter hand over this info the day before the summons was sent.
And then it points to the clear free speech chilling effects this kind of unmasking could cause:
Second, permitting CBP to pierce the pseudonym of the @ALT_USCIS account would have a grave chilling effect on the speech of that account in particular and on the many other ?alternative agency? accounts that have been created to voice dissent to government policies. The Supreme Court has long recognized the extraordinary value of the kind of speech emanating from these accounts?pure political speech criticizing government policies and highlighting government waste and mismanagement. And the Court has likewise recognized that anonymity is often essential to fostering such political speech where, as here, the speaker could face retaliation or retribution if his or her real identity were linked to the speech. In this context, the CBP Summons must be declared unlawful and enjoined absent an evidentiary showing by Defendants that some criminal or civil offense has been committed, that unmasking the users? identity is the least restrictive means for investigating that offense, that the demand for this information is not motivated by a desire to suppress free speech, and that the interests of pursuing that investigation outweigh the important free speech rights of Twitter and its users. Defendants have not even attempted to meet that burden.
As for the actual account, since the lawsuit was announced it retweeted the ACLU saying that it will go to court to defend the anonymous person or people behind the account, and then it pinned the following tweet:
— ALT? Immigration (@ALT_uscis) April 6, 2017
I have no idea if the people behind the account really work for US CIS, but there’s no way that the government should be able to abuse other laws or chill free speech to try to track down people saying things they don’t like.
Filed Under: cbp, dhs, free speech, privacy, uscis
Companies: twitter
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