1. United States
2. Ariz.
3. Letter

Disturbing evidence is emerging from court cases across the country of ICE usual and customary practices that put law abiding immigrants and US citizens in danger. By now, we are all aware of the warrantless searches and arrests, the racial profiling, the use of facial recognition and surveillance technology that misidentifies individuals and tracks all of us without us having been convicted of a crime. Information in a court filing in Oregon shows that in order to meet a daily quota, ICE used Palantir surveillance to identify an area they believed would be housing migrant farm workers, then lumped those with visas and without together as targets. They pulled over a white van that was carrying carpooling farm workers to pick food for American families, then broke out the window to force everyone onto the pavement. ICE officers used Mobile Fortify to scan workers’ faces, resulting in inaccurate identification of at least one person as being two different people. Deliberately targeting the migrant workers who do the back breaking labor of harvesting the fresh, healthy food that Americans eat is not only horrible, it’s a strategy for devastating our own food security. Fewer guest workers will be willing to endure the already difficult conditions and low pay of migrant farm work when they are harassed, demoralized, and racially profiled even when they have legal authorization to do the work they do. If enlightened self interest is not reason enough to course correct these abusive stops that were described by the judge in this case as “unlawful and unjustified,” I would remind you that this administration assured the American people that they would be targeting the worst of the worst. This was a targeted operation. They are clearly not targeting bad people, they are attacking hard working people who feed American families. It’s a disgrace.