House Dumps Trump's Immigration Bill, Deep-Sixing A Sizable Increase In Border Surveillance

from the doing-us-all-a-solid-despite-themselves dept

Despite the President demanding -- via Twitter -- that House Republicans pass the "strong but fair" immigration bill, the House Republicans did not, in fact, pass the muscley but attractive immigration bill. The bill would have diverted $25 billion to Donald's Folly and steeply decreased the number of immigrants the nation is willing to extend citizenship to. It may have done a little good by providing another route to citizenship for children brought into the US by illegal immigrants, but that would have been undone by the removal of time limits for the detention of accompanied children.

So, it was a hearty blend of bad and worse. There were compromises made to push the few centrists onto the "aye" side but what was offered wasn't enough to sway the middle ground and wasn't harsh enough to satisfy the anti-immigration hardliners. The bill will be back again eventually, but there's no telling what will be added or subtracted before the next push to the president's desk begins.

However, there is a silver lining -- at least for those concerned about the ability of the border to swallow everyone's rights. As the EFF noted, the House's rejection of this bill meant no increase in border-related surveillance, snooping, and data harvesting.

The bill contained a slew of authorizations for border agencies to get all up in everybody's everything the moment they hit a checkpoint.

The bill calls for increased DNA and other biometric screening, updated automatic license plate readers, and expanded social media snooping. It also asks for 24 hours-a-day, five-days-a-week drone surveillance along the southern U.S. border.

This bill would give the U.S. Department of Homeland Security broad authority to spy on millions of individuals who live and work as far as 100 miles away from a U.S. border. It would enforce invasive biometric scans on innocent travelers, regardless of their citizenship or immigration status.

As is noted in the EFF's write-up of the immigration bill, this extensive surveillance wouldn't be limited to those people lots of Americans mistakenly believe have zero Constitutional rights. It would also affect US citizens -- the sort of people everyone agrees have Constitutional rights.

And the additions were problematic from more than the civil liberties standpoint. There's been a rush to harvest biometric data, but it's being done without proper oversight, public input, or even the required Privacy Impact Assessments. Facial recognition, in particular, is a technology known to provide a ton of false positives for every successful "hit," raising the probability of wrongful arrests, detainments, and deportations.

Allowing the CBP to engage in even more drone surveillance (and not limiting where the CBP's drones can be flown) makes little sense considering the DHS Inspector General found the drones the CBP were operating were mostly useless and far from cost effective. All this would do is encourage the agency to spend more money faster with almost no return on investment.

The bill would also have codified DHS's on-again, off-again social media screening of visa applicants. The DHS admitted it does not have the legal authority to screen social media accounts of legal US citizens, but an expansive snooping program would certainly allow CBP to perform backdoor searches of US persons' communications should any visa applicant be in regular contact with American citizens. The codification would have retroactively forgiven DHS's sins and given it full authority to turn the visa application process into fishing expeditions for bored border agents.

The defeat of the immigration bill is a small victory on several fronts, but the mindset of many of its opponents appears to be that it doesn't go far enough towards creating some sort of DMZ between us and our southern neighbor. That Trump seems intent on portraying our apologetic neighbor to the north as some sort of safe haven for "bad hombres" ("bad hombrehs"?) is more than a little disconcerting, as the only previous aggression we've observed was detailed in the late John Candy's last comedy. This, however, might explain why the "papers, please" demands of CBP officers can be heard echoing in such unlikely places as New Hampshire and Maine. All we can do is hope the next attempt at shoving an immigration bill through doesn't include a few billion to brick up the northern reaches of Montana and send a flotilla of Coast Guard interceptors to the Great Lakes.

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Filed Under: border surveillance, congress, donald trump, immigration, immigration bill, surveillance


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  1. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 28 Jun 2018 @ 12:22pm

    " [B]ut that would have been undone by the removal of time limits for the detention of accompanied children."

    Except the removal of those limits lets the kids stay with their family. Right?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. icon
    Andrew (profile), 28 Jun 2018 @ 12:28pm

    ..."It would also affect US citizens -- the sort of people everyone agrees have Constitutional rights."

    Have you guys not been reading the articles you've been writing these past years? Or any other news?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 28 Jun 2018 @ 12:46pm

    Re:

    You realize this is a blog, right? It's not a news site.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  4. identicon
    carlb, 28 Jun 2018 @ 1:09pm

    Border Patrol on the Canadian boundary?

    This is why some of us on the Canada-US border no longer travel to or through the US: http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/news05/ogdensburg-woman-says-border-patrol-agent-shocked-her-with -stun-gun-video-20150509

    Yes, that's the USG abusing a US citizen in the US. Clear enough?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  5. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 28 Jun 2018 @ 1:15pm

    if U were King

    ...OK, so what would a good and proper Immigration Bill look like ?

    More broadly, does the U.S. need any formal immigration policy at all ?

    If you were King -- what would be your immigration policy here, if any.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  6. icon
    ShadowNinja (profile), 28 Jun 2018 @ 1:24pm

    Re:

    That was never a law, it was Trump and AG Jeff Session's own policy.

    Hence a law is not needed to fix it. Trump already backed down on that.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  7. icon
    ShadowNinja (profile), 28 Jun 2018 @ 1:26pm

    Re: if U were King

    More broadly, does the U.S. need any formal immigration policy at all ?

    In the past the US largely didn't have any immigration policy, and largely let almost anyone move to the country. I'm not just talking about the colonial America days either.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  8. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 28 Jun 2018 @ 1:40pm

    Re: Re: if U were King

    well OK --- and just what would you do today if U were King?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  9. icon
    Stephen T. Stone (profile), 28 Jun 2018 @ 2:39pm

    Re: Re: Re: if U were King

    Well, for starters, I wouldn’t be ruling a democratic republic that elects a president instead of a king.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  10. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 28 Jun 2018 @ 8:39pm

    Damn, out_of_the_blue is really not going to like this.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  11. icon
    Ninja (profile), 29 Jun 2018 @ 6:10am

    Re: Re: Re: if U were King

    I'd summon you to kiss my foot everyday. And sentence you to like watching Donald Trump speeches non-stop for life.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  12. identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 29 Jun 2018 @ 8:33am

    Five days per week

    It also asks for 24 hours-a-day, five-days-a-week drone surveillance along the southern U.S. border.

    Five days per week? Is that correct? How important is it to have people watching for Mexicans at 3 AM, if everyone knows there will soon be a 24-hour period without the surveillance?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  13. icon
    jupiterkansas (profile), 2 Jul 2018 @ 9:53am

    DMZ? I think you mean MZ.

    link to this | view in thread ]


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