Donald Trump used ‘Stingrays’ to Hunt Immigrants. Now Joe Biden Is Too.

[ad_1]

When Milton Marin Caceres-Molina was arrested in New York for false impersonation — generally an accusation of lying to a police officer about a name or date of birth — his fingerprints showed that he had been deported to his home country in El Salvador in 2010.

But when authorities found out who Caceres-Molina was, he was gone.

Federal law enforcement officials tried to locate Caceres-Molina based on selfies he posted on Facebook. But when that effort failed, a U.S. Marshal applied for a warrant to authorize the use of a controversial technology to track Caceres-Molina. Authorities wanted to use a cellphone tower simulator to find the mobile phone associated with his Facebook account.

They easily tracked down Caceres-Molina, and he was soon arrested.

The Donald Trump Administration spearheaded the use of these cellphone tower simulators — a colloquial spy tool known as “Stingray” that tricks mobile phones into connecting to a fake cell tower to determine the phone’s physical location — to prosecute people accused of low -level immigration offenses. But, according to new court documents obtained by The Daily Beast, Joe Biden’s administration is pursuing the controversial tool.

Cell tower simulators have already raised privacy concerns among civil liberties advocates. Stingrays are, after all, powerful tools in the hands of the federal government, and there are many problematic uses, criticized by critics, especially in the absence of a warrant or in the investigation of low -level offenses.

“Cell site simulators are very powerful and invasive surveillance technology,” Nathan Freed Wessler, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s speech, privacy, and technology project told The Daily Beast. “It’s a positive development that DHS is telling judges what they’re doing and getting search warrants — they weren’t doing it before.”

“But,” Freed Wessler continued, “if these devices are to be used under the constitutional system, they must be reserved for the most serious investigations with strict supervision and limitations.”

The Detroit News reported the first known use of a cell site simulator, used to locate and deport Rudy Carcamo-Carranza, a 23-year-old restaurant worker wanted on illegal re-entry on charges after he get involved in a car accident and flee from the area. .

In 2019, according to reporting from Univision, immigration officials again used a cell site simulator to locate and deport Valente Palacios Tellez, a Mexican immigrant charged with illegal re-entry after he returned to the U.S. after of deportation and arrested following a fight outside a restaurant in New York City.

But little is known about other cases where immigration officials have used the devices.

In documents obtained by the ACLU through the Freedom of Information Act case in 2017, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) policy asserted that immigration officials could only use cell site simulators in the context of a case. criminal.

But whether a given immigration violation is treated as a criminal or civil offense is even greater, according to Freed Wessler.

“They say they’re not using them for civil immigration enforcement. The problem we’ve had over the past few decades is the incredible criminalization of immigration law,” Freed Wessler said.

While illegal re -entry is a crime, federal authorities are used to manage violations through civil immigration enforcement measures. But as immigration has become a more controversial political issue over the past few decades, prosecutors have increasingly decided to charge immigrants with criminal offenses.

During the Obama administration, criminal prosecutions of illegal entry and re-entry intensified, which again escalated under the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy.

In two of the previously known cases involving simulator cells used for immigration enforcement, the suspects have garnered attention from federal law enforcement following relatively low levels of charges at the state level.

On the warrant application for Caceres-Molina’s phone location, federal law enforcement said he was wanted in his home country of El Salvador in aggravated homicide cases, despite the affidavit supporting a criminal complaint against him the charges were not mentioned.

ICE’s policy for obtaining cell site simulator warrants, as spelled out in documents obtained by the ACLU, does not restrict the use of cell site simulators to undocumented immigrants who are charged additional, unrelated immigration violations.

“If they can chase this person solely on the basis of a warrant of arrest for an illegal re -entry charge, then nothing binds them to do the same thing against anyone who may be charged with illegal entry or re -entry,” said Freed Wessler.

[ad_2]