How Trump’s mass deportation plan can use AI to fight immigration

A key 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 “launch the largest mass deportation mission in our country’s history.”

Trump’s appointment of Thomas Homan as “border czar” and Stephen Miller as deputy chief of staff for policy, two officials considered hardliners on immigration, suggests that the administration’s crackdown will seek to make good on that promise and move aggressively. although the Trump transition team has not revealed details.

Trump has vowed to launch mass deportations of criminals, but has also promised to end temporary protective status for individuals. In a brief post-election interview with NBC News, he said that he had “no choice” but to carry out mass deportations after the election results and that there was “no price” for doing so.

Homan, former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said earlier this year: “Nobody is off the table. If you’re here illegally, you’d better look over your shoulder,” and he promised to “lead the largest deportation force this country has ever seen.”

However, implementing these commitments is a logistical challenge. Artificial intelligence can help.

While AI was not yet widely used during the Trump administration’s initial crackdown on immigration policy, the technology is now more accessible and widespread across many systems and government agencies, and President Biden’s administration began dedicating its budget and organizational focus at DHS .

In April, the Department of Homeland Security created the Artificial Intelligence Safety and Security Board to help establish perimeters and protocols for deploying the technology. The DHS 2025 budget allocates $5 million to open an AI office in the DHS Office of the Chief Information Officer. According to the DHS budget note, the office is responsible for advancing and accelerating the “responsible use” of AI by establishing standards, policies and oversight to support the increasing adoption of AI across DHS.

“AI is a transformative technology that can advance our national interests in unprecedented ways. At the same time, it poses real risks that we can mitigate by adopting best practices and other concrete measures being studied,” said DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas at the inauguration of the new board.

Experts now fear that DHS’s mission will focus on deportations and use untested AI to help. Security experts close to DHS worry about how an emboldened and refocused DHS might use AI.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesman declined to 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 who specializes in the impact of migration technologies on people crossing borders and author of “The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence,” has examined the use of technology along the border, including drones and robodogs, as a faculty fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. She criticized the use of AI at the border under the Democratic Party administration, but believes the use of AI as a weapon will increase under the Trump administration.

“Knowing that the Trump administration has signaled that it wants to carry out the largest mass deportation in U.S. history, and the fact that it has these tools, it is creating a surveillance manhunt not only at the border, but also inside the country, that could capture communities across the U.S.,” Molnar said, adding that an entire industry ecosystem has been created to police borders and immigration.

“The private sector has had a huge impact on the growth of the frontier industrial problem,” Molnar said, adding that private companies have led the way in introducing robodogs (with innocuous names like Snoopy and Sniffer), drones and AI. infused towers.

“Much surveillance technology has expanded under Democratic administrations, but the new administration has signaled that technology will be a tool to help them achieve their goals,” Molnar said.

An AI immigration manhunt vs. AI deregulation and growth

Remaya Campbell, acting Homeland Security Commissioner for the District of Columbia, said AI can automate immigration decision-making and bypass traditional processes.

“AI could be used to identify people for deportation at large. “Without regard for privacy or due process,” Campbell said, adding that AI decision-making systems operate on the values ​​conveyed by their users. “And in the Trump administration, that could certainly mean reinforcing intersectional biases to align with policy priorities,” she said. “At a minimum, we might expect AI to be used not as a tool for efficiency, fairness and security in immigration decision-making, but as a tool of systemic bias and authoritarian rule,” Campbell added.

Neil Sahota, an AI adviser to the United Nations’ AI for Good initiative, said he shared those concerns because AI already has a strong presence in managing the vast, hard-to-police U.S. borders and its use will increase under Trump .

DHS Customs and Border Protection already uses AI-powered drones with machine learning to detect unusual patterns that could indicate illegal border crossings, drones that can distinguish between people, animals and vehicles and help minimize false alarms, Sahota said. Sensor towers equipped with AI enable round-the-clock monitoring, enable faster response times and relieve pressure on human resources.

“It is expected that a Trump administration would push for even more AI surveillance, potentially introducing autonomous patrols and expanding biometric verification,” Sahota said.

While this could improve border security, it could also raise privacy concerns, particularly among those living near borders. And Sahota added that the Trump administration’s use of AI could go beyond security and assistance with deportations. “AI surveillance systems would be a cornerstone of Trump’s deportation strategy,” Sahotra said. “Improved AI could speed up deportations,” Sahota added, bringing with it the potential for rights violations and racial profiling.

These systems use facial recognition and behavioral analysis capabilities to identify people suspected of being in the country illegally, but he warned that these systems don’t always do it right. “How do we deal with situations where AI makes mistakes when identifying people’s immigration status? What happens if the system incorrectly flags a legal resident or citizen for deportation? The consequences are devastating for families and our community,” said Sahota.

Laura MacCleery, senior policy director at Unidos US, the country’s largest Hispanic advocacy group, said problems with AI accuracy are known because systems draw inaccurate conclusions and data about people of color tends to be less accurate.

DMV records, utility bills, and facial recognition technology at the border and airports will all be tools that could be enhanced with AI to carry out deportations.

“These technologies could be changed and changed and have different guardrails in a different administration. The concern about mass deportations is the increased use of AI by immigration authorities and the overpowering of the ability to monitor public data, MacCleery said.

It is inevitable, she said, that AI will invade U.S. citizens.

“Because there are U.S. citizens living with people of different immigration statuses, and those people will be swept along and the due process rights of people who are here legally could be violated, and that is extremely problematic and an inevitable consequence the overuse of this type of technology,” MacCleery said.

But Marina Shepelsky, CEO, co-founder and immigration attorney at New York-based Shepelsky Law Group, said she doesn’t view the Trump administration’s AI policies as a dystopian technology to be feared. “He is a businessman, he will see the value in allowing AI to advance and grow to make the lives of lawyers like me, doctors, scientists, etc. easier,” Shepelsky said.

She believes AI will thrive and be deregulated in a Trump administration. “Hopefully, with Elon Musk at his side, President Trump would push for more foreign technology AI experts to come to the US faster and with less bureaucracy to improve AI and reduce its current clumsiness,” Shepelsky said. “I am not an alarmist and am not tearing my hair out about Trump being our next president. I may not like all of his policies, but when it comes to AI – I think he will push for its growth and for more flexible laws and regulations so that AI can grow.”