The Department of Homeland Security allocated $5 million in its 2025 budget to open an AI Office, and DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has called AI a “transformative technology.”
AI-aided surveillance towers, “Robodogs”, and facial recognition tools are all currently being used in homeland security in some capacity, and could be ramped up even further in the mass deportation plan floated by President-elect Donald Trump.
However, experts worry that increased use of AI by the DHS could lead to privacy and due process violations
A signature campaign promise of President-elect Donald Trump is to initiate mass deportations of undocumented residents of the United States. At a Sept. 12 campaign stop in Tucson, Arizona, Trump promised to “begin the largest mass deportation mission in the history of our country.”
Trump’s selection of Thomas Homan as “border czar” and Stephen Miller as deputy chief of staff for policy, two officials seen as hard-liners on immigration, suggest that the administration’s approach to a crackdown will attempt to make good on that promise and be aggressive, though details have not been provided by the Trump transition team.
Trump has said he will start mass deportation efforts with criminals, but he has also vowed to repeal Temporary Protected Status for individuals. He said in a brief post-election interview with NBC News that he has “no choice” but to pursue mass deportation after the election results, and that there is “no price tag.”
Homan, former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said earlier this year that “No one’s off the table. If you’re here illegally, you better be looking over your shoulder,” and he vowed to “run the biggest deportation force this country has ever seen.”
Carrying out these pledges, though, is logistically daunting. Artificial intelligence may help.
While AI wasn’t widely used during the first Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, the technology has become more accessible and widely deployed across many systems and government agencies, and President Biden’s administration began devoting DHS budget and organizational focus to it.
In April, the Department of Homeland Security created the Artificial Intelligence Safety and Security Board to help establish perimeters and protocols for the technology’s use. The 2025 DHS budget includes $5 million to open an AI Office in the DHS Office of the Chief Information Officer. According to the DHS budget memo, the office is responsible for advancing and accelerating the “responsible use” of AI by establishing standards, policies, and oversight to support the growing adoption of AI across DHS.
“AI is a transformative technology that can unprecedentedly advance our national interests. At the same time, it presents real risks we can mitigate by adopting best practices and taking other studied concrete actions,” DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said when inaugurating the new board.
Now there is concern among experts that DHS’s mission will pivot towards deportation and use untested AI to help. Security experts close to DHS worry about how an emboldened and reoriented DHS might wield AI.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesman wouldn’t speculate on how AI might be used in Trump’s administration.
The Trump transition and Homan did not respond to requests for comment.
Petra Molnar, a lawyer and anthropologist specializing in the impacts of migration technologies on people crossing borders and the author of “The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence,” has studied the use of technology along the border, which includes drones and robodogs, as faculty associate at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society. She has been critical of AI’s use at the border under Democratic Party administrations, but does think that the weaponization of AI will grow under Trump’s administration.
“Knowing the Trump administration has signaled they want to conduct the largest mass deportation in U.S. history and the fact that they have these tools at their disposal, it creates a surveillance dragnet not just at the border but inland that could capture communities all over the U.S.,” Molnar said, adding that an entire ecosystem of industry has been created to police borders and immigration.
“There’s been a huge influence of the private sector in the growth of the border-industrial problem,” Molnar said, adding that private companies have led the way in introducing robodogs (with benign names like Snoopy and Sniffer), drones, and AI-infused towers.
“Much of the surveillance technology has been expanded under Democratic administrations, but there has been a signaling of the incoming administration that tech will be a tool to assist them in accomplishing their goals,” Molnar said.
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https://www.cnbc.com/2024/12/01/trump-mass-deportation-plan-ai-immigration-border.html