Latest news with #AlienTracker
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
ICE is using a tracking app to identify people who can easily be deported
ICE agents are reportedly using a new mapping app to track down migrants living illegally in the U.S who can be easily deported to meet Donald Trump's aggressive quotas. The app, an early version of which was known as Alien Tracker or ATRAC, allows agents and officers to view areas around the country with higher concentrations of people under deportation orders, making them more vulnerable to detention. Information about more than 700,000 individuals is recorded on the app and is available in a 'baseball-card-style format,' according to documents obtained by The New York Times. The Times reports that the app was launched with the help of Elon Musk and DOGE, before the billionaire's exit from the department late last month. According to documents seen by the outlet and accounts from ICE officials in Florida, the app also allows officers to identify immigrants with criminal convictions, further increasing the chances of a swift removal. 'The heat map shows where there are executable final orders of removal around the nation. And that officer then can just zoom in on those areas,' Garrett Ripa, head of the Miami ICE office, told The Times. To increase its reach, the tracker reportedly draws on data from multiple government agencies, including the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the U.S. Marshals Service, and the Social Security Administration. The agency reportedly plans for the tracker to ultimately consolidate data from all interior agencies, including housing and labor departments, the Human Services Department and the IRS. It comes as the administration continues to push forward with its aggressive targets, spearheaded by senior White House advisor Stephen Miller. Miller, the architect of Trump's anti-immigration agenda, pushed ICE officials to ramp up arrests after falling short of the president's ambitions for record-breaking daily deportations, according to a recent report in The Wall Street Journal. More than 200,000 people in the U.S. without authorization have been sent back to their home country, according to internal government data obtained by The Times. Miller told Fox News late last month that ICE would set a goal of a 'minimum' of 3,000 arrests a day. He reportedly asked top ICE officials last month if they believed it was possible to reach one million deportations by the end of the year, according to people with knowledge of the meeting. To achieve this, he told law enforcement to 'just go out there and arrest illegal aliens,' per the WSJ, adding that he had told agents to target Home Depot parking lots and 7-Eleven convenience stores to find suspects. It was these instructions that reportedly lit the fuse for the raids in Los Angeles County, which have since devolved into violent clashes between demonstrators and police – and prompted Trump to summon 4,000 members of the state national guard. Alongside stakeouts of clubs, restaurants and other community hubs, internal administration documents reviewed by The Washington Post instructed ICE agents in more than 20 states to arrest people at courthouses, immediately after their cases are dismissed by a judge, or if they are given orders for their removal. Following that, immigrants who have been in the country for less than two years are placed into a fast-track removal process, which does not involve a hearing before a judge. Alongside the internal tactics of the agency, ICE has also sought help from members of the public, with a phone number for people to call and report on potential illegal immigrants. 'When you call our Tip Line, we listen!' the agency wrote in the caption of a video posted to X last month. The somewhat graphic footage showed the arrest of several men outside a home improvement store in Baltimore, Maryland. For those wanting an end to the hunt and a chance of future return to the U.S., the government has offered yet another solution. On Monday, the DHS announced on X that any immigrants who self-deported through its 'CBP Home App' would receive 'forgiveness of any failure to depart fines,' as well as cost-free travel and even a $1,000 'exit bonus.' 'By self-deporting, illegal aliens take control of their departure and may preserve the opportunity to come back to the U.S. the right and legal way in the future,' it added.
Yahoo
22-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
RFK Jr.'s autism registry idea raises all kinds of red flags
Happy Tuesday! Here's your Tuesday Tech Drop, a collection of the past week's top stories from the intersection of technology and politics. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who's been facing backlash over anti-scientific, offensive and belittling remarks he made about the basic abilities of autistic people, is launching a disease registry to track Americans with autism. The news raises a host of data security concerns, in addition to questions about how Kennedy might use the data to advance his conspiratorial and harmful health agenda. Advocates for people with autism have decried Kennedy's recent comments that autism is a 'preventable' disease that 'destroys families,' and Kennedy has hired a discredited vaccine researcher to investigate debunked claims that autism and vaccines are linked. So the idea that the health secretary wants to compile a database of Americans who have a condition he seems intent on spreading falsehoods about is more than a little suspect. CBS News reports: 'Between 10 and 20 outside groups of researchers will be given grant funding and access to the records to produce Kennedy's autism studies.' Read more at CBS News. Trump Media and Technology Group, which is majority-owned by President Donald Trump and according to a regulatory filing has been placed in a trust controlled by his oldest son, is asking the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate a hedge firm that bet against it to the tune of more than $100 million. In other words, Trump's media company is asking the Trump administration to probe someone who predicted its failure. Read my report at MSNBC. Last week, Google lost its second antitrust lawsuit in less than a year, when a judge ruled that its advertising business ran afoul of monopoly rules. This follows a separate antitrust lawsuit Google lost last year, over its Chrome search engine. The federal government is asking a judge to require that Google sell Chrome, and a separate judge will decide the proper punishment on the advertising front. Read more at The New York Times. 404 Media reported that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is planning to create a centralized database with data from various federal agencies that can be used to help target people as part of Trump's immigration crackdown. The tool reportedly is known as ATrac, or Alien Tracker, and will 'provide near real-time tracking of both targets on a local level and the broader set of immigration enforcement targets around the country' by pulling data from several agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Department of Labor. Read more at 404 Media. Meta owner Mark Zuckerberg has embarked on a largely behind-the-scenes lobbying campaign with top government officials — including House Speaker Mike Johnson — to steer lawmakers away from passing rules on children's online safety that could place the onus on Meta to verify users' ages. Read more at Politico. The Federal Trade Commission is suing ride-hailing app Uber over what it says are 'deceptive' billing and cancellation practices involving the Uber One subscription service. An Uber spokesperson said the company is 'disappointed' by the complaint, but confident that court rulings will be in its favor. Read more at CNN. The White House is trying to beat back outcry over a report that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth shared sensitive military details about a military strike with his wife, brother and personal attorney. This, of course, would mark the second time in as many months that Hegseth was embroiled in such a scandal involving the Signal messaging app. And Sabrina Singh, a former deputy press secretary for the Defense Department, explained for MSNBC why this Hegseth scandal is worse than the first: The first group chat that we learned about consisted of members of the national security team. He [Hegseth] still shared sensitive information in a commercial text app but these were with people who typically meet the 'need to know' threshold. But do Hegseth's wife, brother and personal attorney have a 'need to know' regarding when a military operation is going to start, the takeoff times of F/A-18s, the launches of the Tomahawk missiles and when the bombs will drop? No. Read Singh's full piece at MSNBC. Semafor's Max Tani reported that Trump's social media company, Truth Social, has dropped political media outlet The Hill from a defamation lawsuit targeting more than a dozen news organizations. Tani's report said that The Hill's parent company, Nexstar, had reached a settlement over a story that overstated Truth Social's financial losses. Read more at Semafor. Over on Salon, writer Amanda Marcotte published a dispatch on her 'unnerving descent' into the prayer app Hallow, which is popular among MAGA celebrities and garnered some of its early funding from Trump-aligned billionaire Peter Thiel and one of his associates, now-Vice President JD Vance. Read more at Salon. This article was originally published on
