It Could Happen Here - Technology and Surveillance on Migrants, with Austin Kocher and Jake Wiener, Pt 2

Episode Date: July 6, 2023

James continues his interview with Austin and Jake, this time discussing ICE's Alternatives to Detention program, and the impacts this has on privacy and the wellbeing of people in the program.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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um at immigrant detention facilities um this includes people who are facing deportation most people who are facing deportation yeah can you explain that the the Title VIII thing? Because people might not be familiar. I've tried to explain that before, but I'd love you to explain that again, just so people are clear. Regarding detention? Well, regarding filing a defensive asylum application and why people might be doing that,

like the post-Title 42 sort of paradigm for processing asylum. Yeah, sure. Okay, so Title 42, which we talked about earlier, has gone away. Now, Title 8 is not like Title 42. It's the part of the US law, which is about immigration. Title 8 never went away, but it is now the dominant section of code that is shaping border enforcement and immigration processing. When someone comes through CBP1 and they get an appointment, they go to their interview with the Port of Entry, then they come into the United States, they have not made an asylum application yet. So they still have to do that. And the United States has two options at this point.

There's two agencies that can make decisions, can receive asylum applications and make decisions. USCIS, which is historically the primary one, US Citizenship and Immigration Services, they have what are called asylum officers whose job it is to adjudicate asylum applications, interview people and so forth. Or people, the United States can file removal proceedings, deportation cases effectively against these individuals and put them into immigration court where an immigration judge can accept an asylum application and adjudicate the asylum application. The major difference here is that in the courtroom, in the immigration court system, that individual is going in front of a judge and has an ICE officer, an enforcement-related kind of attorney, effectively arguing against them in court. Technically, they're not supposed to be arguing against them per se. They're supposed to be finding the right outcome, but effectively, they're arguing against them in court. Technically, they're not supposed to be arguing

against them per se. They're supposed to be finding the right outcome, but effectively, they're arguing against them, almost like they're trying to apply for asylum in immigration court, or in a criminal court setting, almost. Not really, but almost. Right. So, here's the two main differences know, historically, when people have been put into the immigration court system, ICE does have the option of detaining them or at least detaining them for an early part of that process until they meet some certain tolls. The Biden administration has decided largely at this point not to go that route. That has not been true in the past. The Trump administration's

detention numbers were up well over 60,000 people detained a day at one point. Right now, it's about half that. It's up from the beginning of the year, but it's about almost 30,000 people are in detention now. And people seem to be moving through even when they are detained relatively quickly. This is where alternatives to detention come in. We should not think of alternatives to detention as alternatives to detention. In fact, ICE itself has said on their website and in testimony before Congress, alternatives to detention is not an alternative to detention. It is an alternative to unsupervised release. it is an alternative to unsupervised release right so it's what it really is is an electronic monitoring program that allows the agency to effectively keep track of everyone that they want to keep track of now the number of people in this alternatives to detention program is an

extremely small fraction of the number of asylum systems in court. It is nowhere near, you know, saturating the total number of people that they could be. One wonders whether they consider 5% monitoring some kind of massive success when, you know, when most people are actually not monitored. But one major change has happened, which is, in addition to the smartphone app that migrants use to even try to seek asylum now migrants also have to download an app called smart link yeah uh that is now this one's not built in house this is contracted out uh from an organization called bi that effectively mostly contracts with the criminal justice system but they also contract with ICE. So they have to download an app on their phone, and they have to check in regularly using a similar but different kind of

facial technology. They can communicate with deportation officers. They can get alerts about their immigration court here, all this stuff. But the crucial part of that is under threat of detention or redetention, redetaining, migrants have to check in on their smartphone. So it means that that same phone that one struggled with on the periphery of Reynosa trying to just even get into the United States to pursue what is their legal right to pursue asylum, now they're glued to their smartphone worried that if they don't respond to a text message or an alert or a ping on their phone, they could be redetained and potentially deported in some way. So that's currently how this is. So it's not for everyone.

It's not as if everyone follows this exact same path. But it is true, and I think this is the big takeaway. It is true that asylum seekers today will start interacting with the U.S. government, may start interacting with the U.S. government on their smartphone as far south as Mexico City, and then continue to have their primary contact and interaction with the U.S. government on their smartphone all the way through the border and to Columbus, Ohio, New York City, Seattle, Washington. So the smartphone has become effectively this kind of what I am trying to think of and conceptualize as a kind of mobile border where migrants never really arrive and they never really leave. Yeah, which is kind of not to get too sort of, I guess, not conspiratorial is the wrong word, but since 2001, the border has come to you more and more and more, right? And you don't have to go to the border for the border to

surveil you. And we can see this in hundreds of ways. Can we backtrack a little bit, just because our listeners will be familiar with some of the human stories that surrounded the end of Title 42. Some of those people, to my understanding, entered the United States, i'm doing heavy air

quotes between ports of entry uh under title 42 but then were detained it is fairly obvious they they thought they were being detained it looked very much like they were being detained they weren't allowed to leave cbp apparently would argue that they were not detained um because the conditions were woefully inadequate by their own detention policies which don't exactly provide for luxurious conditions to begin with and so what would the situation be for those people because they haven't they were trying at least some people I spoke to, to make CBP1 appointments from a place of detention, which I don't think one can do. Maybe one can if one's not on a list or something, but you still have to get there, right?

And you can't leave South or North to access. You have to be in Mexico to schedule an appointment on CBP1. Okay, yeah. These guys were in between the jake knows better than i do i mean the issue with being along the border and james you know this because i mean you're there uh which cell tower you're on if you're close to the border uh oh yeah tricky isn't it i got um i so i use t-mobile but that's a free buzz marketing. But I have free roaming on my phone, right? It's very useful in the work I do.

But I remember in 2018, I was in Mexico a lot. And then I was obviously also just riding my bike a lot in places along the border. And they were like, you've been in Mexico every day this month. You don't live in America. We're going to cancel your phone contract. I had been in

mexico like some days but they had all just think oh you're pinging mexican cell towers yeah well i was on a bike ride like in in east county san diego i wasn't in mexico but it my phone thought i was and so yeah and the same thing can happen in reverse right your phone can ping american cell towers when you're in mexico so those people might appear to be in the u.s when they're not but in that situation they couldn't't make a CBP1 appointment. So I guess they're assumed to have, it's the same as if they'd crossed the fence somewhere else and been detained 10 miles inside the United States, right?

What would their process be? Yeah, so I think if we're talking about right now, this is actually really really important is that the new rule called circumvention of lawful pathways that replace title 42 supposed to happen like three years ago yeah and it's it finally got passed um basically there were a number of court challenges in which red states tried to keep title 42 in place. Um, the same states, mind you, who were, uh, very critical of COVID protections were extremely worried about lifting the ban on people on the Southern border coming in because of COVID concerns. Um, part of what that rulemaking did

was it worked a fundamental change in the way that asylum seekers work. And so like just context, claiming asylum is a human right, is a right guaranteed by international law, is a right guaranteed by US law, that you can show up and say, hey, I am not safe in the country that I'm coming from, and I need asylum in the States. And you have a right to do that. And for the US or whatever country you arrive in to process your claim and decide if it's valid or not. So one of the changes in this rulemaking was that they are applying what is called the government is applying a presumption of ineligibility to people seeking asylum, which means that if you did not show up in a proper manner,

the United States, that means if you did not use the CBP one app to claim asylum before you got to the border, and if you did not apply for asylum in every country that you traveled through along the way, if you traveled from Guatemala and you did not apply for asylum in Mexico before you got to the border, you are automatically deemed ineligible and your asylum claim will be denied with no hearing, with no opportunity to say,

hi, I'm here because my husband is a police officer somewhere in Guatemala and he's trying to kill me and i can't stay in the country right yeah um and so that is a like fundamental change in the way the law works and that's the starting point of someone who has crossed illegally not used cbp1 um and then is picked up up. And that's new in the law in 2023. Yeah. And so they will immediately be filing like a defensive asylum application, right, to prevent that removal.

Yes. And basically at that point, you're trying to argue for one of a tiny subset of exemptions. Yes. Which there is virtually no guidance on how to implement those exemptions, right? Like one thing you can claim is that you cross without a CVP one appointment because you couldn't use the app. The idea of trying to prove to someone at the Customs and Border Protection that you are technologically unable to use an app seems basically impossible um given that the only proof that you have is that you didn't get the appointment right that you weren't

able to submit it um that's not a strong record that a lawyer would like to argue on i will tell you as a lawyer um and so the result is basically that people who have certainly legitimate asylum claims are likely to be turned away because they didn't comply with the proper process yeah even people we heard um what's it idalgo i can't remember where it was now where uh customs or officials in mexico have been threatening to detain people for longer than it so they they couldn't make it in time for their CBP1 appointment, right? That they had already made, they'd gone through that arduous and biased process, made the appointment,

and then people were being detained unless they paid a bribe. And then if those people had crossed, like, illegally in between ports of entry, it would be very hard for them to prove that that had happened at all, right? Like, what had caused them to do that? So those people are in an even more difficult scenario um if people then through any of these processes find themselves in a atd alternative to detention um there are

numerous ways it could be surveilled i've also mentioned that their their phone app which i think is is the perhaps the like most recent and most common one um another one is ankle monitors right you can get like a parole kind of style of ankle monitor and i know that uh jake you've written a little bit about some of the consequences of those you want to talk about that yeah so first of all an overview of the ATV program is that there are different levels of monitoring. And all of them are, I think, should functionally be viewed as incarceration, which is to say that you've not been released from custody. Just the location of your custody has been moved from a prison to somewhere out in the world where you're being surveilled and your movements are

potentially tracked, but you are still in many ways as vulnerable as you would be if you were actually in a jail or a prison. And so ICE has the option to decide at their discretion which level of monitoring you get. The levels of monitoring, the highest level is an ankle bracelet or an ankle shackle. That is a GPS device that is battery powered, has potentially only a few hours of charge on it. You might get a day of charge off of it and is constantly monitoring your location and sending that location back to both ice and to the contracting staff of bi industries this prison technology company who ice has hired as case managers basically people who are providing like support for ice on keeping track of the usually eight to 10,000 people who

are on the ankle monitor system. Um, if you don't get quite that high level, or if you get deescalated over time, you, you know, applied ice and you say, Hey, I've been on my ankle bracelet for like three months. I've not strayed outside the area I'm supposed to go. I've always responded to check-ins. Then they might bump you down to the SmartLink app, also provided by BI Industries on an extremely lucrative contract. Their last contract was like $2.2 billion. And that SmartLink app

is either going to be loaded on your smartphone, if you have a smartphone that can handle it, or you'll be given a smartphone by ICE and told to use that smartphone to check in you will be required to check in on a sort of regular schedule um i don't have a strong sense for how often that is um could be daily could be less um to check in you're gonna open to open the app up. It's going to ping your GPS location, send it to ICE. And then you're going to take a facial recognition photograph. That photograph will be compared to make sure that you're actually you. That photograph is also potentially capturing your surroundings, the people you live with,

whoever's like in the frame. And then you can communicate with your case manager on the app. You can potentially find information on when your immigration court hearings are, that type of thing. It's the middle level of monitoring. The lowest level of monitoring is voice print-based. So basically, every once in a while, whatever your dedicated check-in time is. You're going to call into ICE on your phone. You're going to say, hi, I'm Jake Wiener. I'm checking in. And ICE will run a voice print analysis and make sure that you are the person you say you are

and confirm your location. At any point, if that system screws up, you are potentially in violation of the terms of your release. And at any point, there's been an error, an ICE officer can show up and take you right back to jail. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill. Would you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters

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where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Let's talk a little bit about that you've mentioned BI, right?

You've both mentioned bi this is not a government agency this is a contractor but potentially they have access to your photograph details of your asylum case and we are we very clear on like certainly with the ice issued phones people seem to have concerns like what is being monitored and what isn't being monitored on the phone right like is it only when they have the app open is everything on their phone now subject to like a review by ice and potentially also by this third-party contractor right so how are those contractors vetting their personnel how are they making sure that these this very sensitive information is secure and private like it should be?

Yeah, I have no idea how they're vetting their staff. They're not exactly forthcoming. One aspect of the surveillance that I think is worth noting is that both ICE and BI don't just have your, whether you're on the smartphone or if you're on an ankle monitor, they don't just have your last GPS ping. They have your historical movements, which means if you're on an ankle monitor, they have a record of every single place you went for the entirety of the time, since you've been on an ankle monitor. And they also know where you are right now. Um, a little more limited on a smartphone, but that's information that's highly sensitive. Um, your location and sensitive. Your location, and especially your historical location information, can tell you all kinds of things, like what church

this person goes to. Have they been to Planned Parenthood recently? Who do they associate with? Like what houses have they visited? And for ICE, that information is very valuable because most migrants don't live alone. They live in community with other people. Some of those people may be undocumented. And so as a migrant, you are now worrying every time you check in, am I exposing someone who's undocumented to ICE surveillance? Am I exposing myself to just tagging somewhere that ICE doesn't want me to be? And maybe an officer is going to show up for a check because of that. It is creating a ton of insecurity in a system that is already very insecure. And the psychological harms of that are manifest.

There's good studies internationally that your risk of suicide and depression goes way up when you're on electronic monitoring, that your access to jobs goes way down. There's stigma with wearing an ankle bracelet. Also concerns that if you take a job, you won't be able to check in at your home at the appropriate time. It looks like you're absconding, right? So this level of monitoring is messing with people's lives in really fundamental and deeply cruel ways. Yeah, definitely. And these, like you talked about, sort of how your phone can make you a snitch.

Mixed status families are very common, especially in migrant diasporas. So it could be someone in your family who has a different immigration status from you and to do what you need to do you might be putting that person at risk so it's a very scary thing to have that that tag on you at all times and like you said like it it's not just where you where you are but where you've been and i if if i'm right like they they they keep that data right that data isn't anonymized or sort of like destroyed they can keep that data forever if they want to yes it's it's inputted into their systems um and that hangs around for i think the retention period is

75 years okay yeah great depends a little bit. Yeah. This technology that goes into these, right? There's facial recognition. I know they also have a number plate, license plate in America, recognition. They have, I'm trying to think, which other technologies they have, their cell phone site simulation.

A lot of that can also be transferred to local police agencies, right? Through some of these, like, they're not tech transfer programs, that's the wrong word, but some of these grants and programs that ICE and DHS more broadly has. Does that mean that local police agencies could also have access to some of this data? Yeah, so I think there's two different types of programs and it's worth breaking them apart. Yeah. There are grant programs that are providing state and local police with the technology itself, right?

That's like money to buy a license plate reader and pop it out in your community. There is also the overlap between federal and special department of Homeland Security, ICE's databases, the systems that they house all this information in, and state and local police, they have their own databases. Those databases are very often linked or accessible, which means that monitoring, you know, your local police department has a log of everyone they arrest. Very often that log is sent to ICE and vice versa. So one of the main ways that this is done is through fusion centers, which is basically a federally funded state-run technology center embedded in state or local police departments, where you have Department of Homeland Security agents who have access to their set of databases, and state and local police department officers who have access to their set of databases sitting right next to each other. And those people can

then talk and be like, yo, I need you to run this search into your system, which is theoretically only for federal use, but suddenly is getting used for state law enforcement, and vice versa. One of the biggest problems with this is that cities that want to be sanctuary cities that don't want their police departments reporting and handing people over to ICE when they arrest undocumented folks. City government is unable to control their local police departments and the information that is sent to ICE. So even a sensible sanctuary cities where the city says, we're not going to report this information, the way that these

databases are tied together, especially license plate reader databases, but as well as arrest databases, all sorts of stuff, means that the city government functionally cannot create a sanctuary city. Right. Which, Justin, if we talk about my situation i'm in san diego uh our mayor uh is terrible and uh wants to turn all our street lights into spies right like put put little put little cameras on them so that they can watch what we're doing and like this information feeds into we know exactly where the fusion center is actually like i wrote about this in 2020 when the cops took someone's phone and used gray key to crack it open and so like the yeah the exposure for people who in the u.s who are not citizens of the u.s is is

very high with these things um the last thing about these databases i wanted to talk about was those aren't the only databases that ICE has access to, right? Can you explain how they've managed to acquire some data about other people and whether or not that is, strictly speaking, legal? Yeah. So we have a massive problem in America with data brokering, which is companies. The worst are LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters Westlaw, but there are hundreds and hundreds of data brokers who vacuum up all of the information that they can off the internet, off of utility records, off of publicly available information, and basically make massive databases that are tracking to the best that they can every aspect of people's

lives credit reporting agencies the people who like give you your credit score are also data brokers they're pulling in all this information so that they can assign you your like credit which is like where your credit cards are how much money you have all this information is super valuable right and it's valuable to advertisers it's valuable for yeah like for marketing but it's also really valuable for law enforcement um because you have everything from like addresses where people are spending money um often you can pull from advertise like phone advertising data people's gps location and a number of these services have sold access to ice um both like thompson rogers clear lexus nexus has several

products that they sell to ice as well as locate x which is now babble street which is now Babel Street, which is specifically a GPS location company. And ICE has basically managed to obtain through contracts information that they could not legally obtain through a warrant. Right. Which is to say that if you, a police officer, an ICE officer, want to get information on a single person, you know, you want their GPS location off their phone, you need to go to a court and say, hey, I'm looking for James Stout, and I think that he committed a crime or he broke immigration law. Here's my evidence. I need a warrant. You cannot get a warrant for mass monitoring. That's a fundamental part of how the Fourth Amendment in the US ConstitutionS. Constitution works,

is that it has to be individualized or very close to individualized. But there is currently no law that says that ICE can't just go buy the information on the open market and completely evade the warrant requirement.

So that's what's going on with LexisNexis, with LocateX, as well as some black social media surveillance companies. Right. Yeah. They're the same databases that I as a journalist use when I'm wondering if this Nazi is still living in this place or finding the Confederate veterans to check if they still work at the Citadel University. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America.

From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors I know you. Podcast Network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the

page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Black Lit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Black Lit on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award. Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking.

It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. So I think a good way to finish this up would be to talk about once you're in you've gone through this process right you've cvp1 you've atd'd uh and you enter into sort of the asylum hearing or you have your your various different asylum processes can austin can you give us a very broad overview of like the likelihood of

success and maybe a couple of i know you're very good at monitoring the factors that determine uh the likelihood of success in an asylum application through track and this is a great place to plug track if you want to um uh can you talk about like how likely folks are to to be successful in that asylum application process? Yeah, so we monitor this federal data related to immigration, other areas through TRAC, Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, where I'm at. I'm also a research fellow at American universities. We have a kind of a fun partnership right now looking at different different angles of connecting, you know, data to

research on Latin American, Latino migrants. And so we keep really close track of what's happening with the immigration courts. We don't get data. Remember earlier, I described those two tracks of seeking asylum. We don't currently get data on that first track where people go through asylum officers at USCIS. We're interested in it, but they actually publish not comprehensive, but they publish decent amount of data. We would certainly like to get more. But it's the immigration courts that we have focused very heavily on for the last decade, I would say. And so we get very detailed, granular data from the immigration courts on a monthly basis that allows us to see exactly what's happening. I would say currently, the success rate, denial rate, however you want to put it,

in immigration court for asylum seekers is about 52 or 53% get denied, about 47 to 48% are granted asylum. But that varies widely by immigration court and by nationality. So migrants from Central America, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala tend to have much higher denial rates, 70, 80%, 90%. nationals from, let's say, Ukraine, China, some other countries, Cuba, have very high success rates. Haiti actually is a good example of a country that has very low grant rates, very high denial rates. Even though, much like northern Mexico, where we actually send people that we deport very often, there are all kinds of travel warnings. The United States government does not want people going to Haiti because it's too dangerous, but we don't seem to have a problem deporting people back there who are seeking asylum, right? And so that's what we've seen in recent years. The denial rate was as high as 70% during the Trump administration.

And so it's certainly much better under the Biden administration. I do want to say, though, that in addition to sort of policy related issues that may drive this factor, geographic concerns, people are much more successful in New York City than, say, Houston or Atlanta, Georgia. Atlanta, Georgia. But one of the really important factors here is in addition to all of that, there's a threshold question, which is a lot of people, including a lot of people who are recently arriving to the United States, if they can't get an attorney, it's very unlikely that they will even be able to file an asylum application in the first place. So that 50, to file an asylum application in the first place. So that 50, you know, that 48% grant rate is for people who file an asylum application. We're not seeing, you know, the people who don't even, who aren't even able to file an asylum application in the first place. And one of the most concerning things, recent developments, is that the Biden administration, I think, not for no reason at all. I mean, there's 2.2 million

pending cases in the immigration courts right now. The Biden administration is trying to push cases through faster. This is something the Obama administration tried, Trump administration tried it, Biden administration tried it. And every single time the cases get accelerated, including a large number of family cases, unfortunately, they simply don't have time to get an attorney and file a good asylum application. So what we're seeing is in addition to like geography, nationality, does someone get an attorney? It's also speed, just how fast the cases go through. And the reality is, if you try to force an asylum case through the immigration courts or, frankly, even through USCIS in a matter of weeks, people are just not going to win. You can't you can't speed things up and maintain a fair system.

You just can't. It's also not great for people to wait, you know, five, six, seven, eight years for a hearing or for a conclusion. So that's not ideal either. But, you know, trying to force cases through and, you know, two or three months is just doesn't work. Yeah. I've spoken to people. I spoke to a friend a couple of weeks ago who was saying that now he's seeing people in newly arrived. He's been in the United States for a few years, gone through the process, but he's seeing people come in and the amount to pay for a lawyer, if they want to get a private lawyer is going up and like if people only have a few months or don't have the right to work there's just no way for them to obtain that much money and and then the people who are doing it sort of i guess sort of for non-profits uh are just overwhelmed by the amount of demand so yeah

those those people are in a really tough situation. Yeah, I think we should talk a little bit about the fundamental unfairness of this system. So like, immigration judges are administrative law judges. They are not like real judges approved by Congress. They are hired by an administrative agency, which effectively means that there are much lower bars to who can be an administrative law judge. You also, as an immigrant, do not have a right to an attorney sitting in front of an administrative law judge. And one of the things that the data frews out is that in every aspect of the system, is that in every aspect of the system, having an attorney is the strongest indicator of a good result. So that's like how likely people are to know about their appointments. It's actually

extremely hard if you are someone who does not speak English and has limited money and limited access to the system. And frankly, does not understand how the American immigration law system works, which is reasonable because virtually no one understands how it works. It's really difficult to know when you have a court date, much less to show up and to understand what kind of information that you need to collect and present to a judge that will be convincing to this person, who again, is not an Article III judge that's been appointed by Congress, not the type of judges that you or I would have our cases heard by if we were arrested, or if we just like filed a lawsuit.

So access to a judge is like the number one best indicator for whether your asylum claim is going to be successful or not, or any kind of claim in the immigration system, frankly. And we do not provide that to people who don't have the money to hire a lawyer. Yeah, which is fundamentally unjust, right? We also, there's like not a guarantee that you'll have a quality translator. Yes, yeah. You'll be able to show up to court and at all understand what is happening in your legal case um which is a huge barrier to be able to get a good results to be

able to communicate who you are and why you are will not be safe if you are deported from the country right yeah we heard that in in may where there were like they were basically asking if anyone could come and help trying to get migrant advocacy groups you know does someone speak komanji does someone speak turkish uh does you know does someone speak vietnamese could they come down and help this person with their initial interview which it's just not a uh not a just or even reasonable way to do these things but yeah that's where it's at right now, I guess. I think most people probably aren't aware of much of that.

So it's good to explain how fundamentally unjust it is. So if people want to learn more about this, if people want to follow along, I know you both do some writing online. Where can they find you and where can they find more of your writing about this? Yeah, so you can find my writing on the electronic privacy

information center or ethics website that is epic.org um you can find me and my 150 followers on twitter at at real jake weiner that's w-i-e-n-e-r um and hopefully in the near future you'll be able to find some scholarship for me as well. Oh, cool. Yeah. Using the Donald Trump Twitter format. Great. How about you, Austin? Where can people find you? You have many more followers on twitter.com. Yeah.

So it's Austin Coker. Last name is K-O-C-H-E-R. The peculiarity of that name is in my favor because it's pretty easy to search. But actually, this is great timing i just had an article published this week detailed one on cbp1 it's called glitches and the digitization of asylum um it's an academic article but uh it is open access so there's no paywall there glitches and the digitization of asylum it's also up on my Twitter page. I'm on Twitter at AC Coker. So A-C-K-O-C-H-E-R. And I also write pretty regularly on Substack. And that's like a weird thing to say. I'm slightly embarrassed to mention it, except that I'm not because this academic article emerged actually out of stuff that I was initially exploring on Substack. So I really loved that format for writing because it's given me a chance to work out

concepts and ideas before they even go into like pure view print. So if people want to get ahead of the curve on what I'm thinking, go check that out too. Nice. And don't forget to visit track, T-R-A-C dot S-Y-R dot E-D-U to get all kinds of data on immigration courts courts alternatives to detention detention statistics and so forth yeah i like there's a telegram channel as well right it's like the only time i can go on telegram and not see dead people so i appreciate it for that that's right we we put stuff out on telegram and whatsapp too uh so if you don't want to have to be on

twitter if you don't want to have to get an email on something like that, you just want to get a little, if you like some of those other messaging platforms, we have announcement threads on there. You can't interact. You just get the little notification, but we try to diversify as much as possible, especially with the muskification of Twitter. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's really a good move. Thank you very much for your time, both of you. I really appreciate it. It was very insightful. Thank you, James.

It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening.

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