Ice foia11/7/2023 ![]() In at least two instances, news organizations were pressured to reveal information about their sources. A major abortion provider in Illinois said that ICE had demanded surveillance video of a man running through their parking lot for a financial investigation. Another two organizations-a religious charity that provides refugees with humanitarian services and a high school in North Dakota-say they could not remember receiving a summons. Two elementary schools say the summonses they received were not related to a merchandise investigation, although both refused to elaborate. Most did not respond, and many who did refused to speak on the record for fear of retaliation. To figure out if these summonses were issued for customs investigations, we contacted 30 organizations that received them. “I really can’t imagine how a student or a health record could possibly be relevant to a permissible customs investigation under the law.” Our investigation found that ICE issued scores of customs summonses to hospitals and hundreds to elementary schools, high schools, and universities. However, nearly everyone we spoke to was concerned about the types of organizations that received these summonses. Without access to the underlying subpoenas ICE issued in each use of a 1509, it’s difficult to know exactly why companies in the database were issued customs summonses. “HSI uses these authorities to investigate a wide array of transnational crime and violations of customs and immigration laws,” the agency says, listing more than a dozen broad categories it says falls under its domain. In an email, ICE maintains that it issues 1509 summonses in accordance with its “broad legal authority" to investigate the transfer of money and goods across borders and within the US. “I don’t know what authority ICE thinks it has to issue these-the law clearly says they are only supposed to be used for customs inspections.” “They very clearly overuse these types of requests,” says Julie Mao, a cofounder and deputy director of Just Futures Law, an immigrant advocacy organization. On one day in October 2020, for instance, the Houston ICE office issued more than 1,000 summonses. Over at least the past six years, the agency appears to have relied on 1509s more frequently the number of summonses issued per year has doubled since 2016, the records show. Of these companies, only Meta responded to our requests for comment, but it declined to answer questions and instead referred to its transparency reports. Of the thousands of summonses sent to social media companies, Meta and Snapchat make up the vast majority. Big technology companies like Google, Meta, and Microsoft collectively received nearly 15,000 summonses. Half of these were sent to telecommunications companies like AT&T, T-Mobile, and Comcast. The data shows that between January 4, 2016, and August 22, 2022, ICE issued 172,679 summonses, averaging more than 70 per day. The subpoena-tracking database that WIRED obtained offers the most detailed breakdown of how ICE has been using the customs summons to date. Its goal is to provide agencies like ICE with a way to obtain business records from companies without having to go to a judge for a warrant. The 1509 customs summons is an administrative subpoena explicitly and exclusively meant for use in investigations of illegal imports or unpaid customs duties under a law known as Title 19 US Code 1509. But it’s the edge cases that have drawn the most concern among legal experts, The primary recipients of 1509s include telecommunications companies, major tech firms, money transfer services, airlines, and even utility companies. While these administrative subpoenas, known as 1509 custom summonses, are meant to be used only in criminal investigations about illegal imports or unpaid customs duties, WIRED found that the agency has deployed them to seek records that seemingly have little or nothing to do with customs violations, according to legal experts and several recipients of the 1509 summonses.Ī WIRED analysis of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) subpoena tracking database, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, found that agents issued custom summons more than 170,000 times from the beginning of 2016 through mid-August 2022. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are using an obscure legal tool to demand data from elementary schools, news organizations, and abortion clinics in ways that, some experts say, may be illegal.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |