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Report: Mobile Fingerprinting a Core Tool in US Deportations

Associated Press

   BOSTON - A mobile fingerprinting app U.S. immigration agents use to run
   remote ID checks in the field has become a core tool in President
   Donald Trump's deportation crackdown, a pair of immigration rights
   groups say in a new report based on a Freedom of Information Act
   lawsuit.

   The 2,500 pages of documents obtained through the 2017 lawsuit show
   that the app, known as EDDIE, has helped Immigration and Customs
   Enforcement agents ramp up deportations of migrants not intentionally
   targeted for removal, the report states. Such people are often detained
   in operations aimed at others, the activists say in Monday's report.
   They say that field use of the app exacerbates racial profiling in
   immigrant communities.

   For instance, an internal agency newsletter released with the documents
   described immigration agents using the app during traffic stops in
   collaboration with local police in Escondido, California, in 2017. That
   report credited the operation with "333 illegal alien arrests" in a
   12-month period, although it provided scant additional context.

   Used routinely by U.S. immigration and border agents, mobile
   fingerprinting figures into the collection of biometric data that the
   Trump administration is seeking to broadly expand in its final weeks. A
   regulation proposed by the Department of Homeland Security on September
   11 would formalize the collection of face, iris and palm prints of
   noncitizens, as well as their DNA, in addition to the fingerprint data
   now collected.

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