In the latest instance of Donald Trump’s fight for liberal democracy, federal agents in Minnesota shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti. It was hard to avoid videos that I could think of as their execution. The images captured by the onlookers and immigration agents were reminiscent of the postcards white onlookers once bought and traded – a reproduction of retaliatory violence, designed to enrage and intimidate.
The killing of Pretti, in particular, left many Americans confused. There is a small measure of comfort our public conscience may be shocked. One might wish it happened sooner – when some people died in immigration and Customs Enforcement custody this past year or immigrants were rounded up in camps. But any torture that convinces you, any needless death that shocks you, you’re here now. You need to pay attention to the guns ICE agents are pointing at the rest of us. You also need to pay attention to everything that happens around guns.
Just before Jonathan Ross, who works for ICE, pulled a gun out of Good’s van, he was shooting video of the incident on his cell phone.
A gun and a telephone are both weapons – one is a tool of violence, and the other is a tool of control.
We understand what the gun is intended to do. That’s why, finally, the opposition to the Trump administration seems to be rallying around the people shouting: “Stop ICE!” It’s another way of saying, control the hand that holds the gun. It is a gun that produces a spectacle of violence that we cannot, in good conscience, look away from.
Yes, we must pay attention to the gun.
But we also have to pay attention to the phone.
That phone represents a great force, one that can surpass Trumpism. ICE knows they can’t shoot us all. But the Department of Homeland Security is close enough to track us all.
The domestic policy bill signed by Trump gave ICE $75 billion in new funding and four years to implement it, making ICE the most heavily funded federal law enforcement agency. The agency is spending heavily on signing bonuses — 12,000 new officers and agents were hired with money from the One Big Beautiful Bill — and high-tech military weapons to be used on US roads. The Department of Homeland Security has also, reportedly, used some of its budget to collect information on people like you.
The federal government, whether controlled by a Democrat- or a Republican, has repeatedly failed to enact important, urgently needed regulation or legislation regarding data privacy that measures our risk. For decades, Americans have treated their data like a cheap foreign commodity. We trade our crumbs – our name, phone number, location data – for discounts, convenience and the illusion of security. Democratic executives, in particular, think Silicon Valley executives are good people. So they indulge their sci-fi desires, invite them to the inner circle of the White House and consult with them about the best practices of consumer data. Then, many chiefs turned heel, helping these administrations to balance the web of data that will eat our civil liberties for lunch, if we let them.
Data is power, control
Many of us have come to believe that our data is something outside of us, when, in fact, the data is ours. Through our shopping patterns and our digital habits, we have generated a lot of information about how we live, think, vote and spend. And there is a whole industry of data brokers collecting and aggregating our data for purchase. As a result, we live in a world where our data is valuable and our ability to protect it is neglected.
Imagine what our country would look like if a federal agency could gather everything it could find about you on the open market and pair it with your most sensitive personal data and the full weight of the federal surveillance apparatus. The result will be a system that can not only track you but accurately predict your choices, behaviors and weaknesses. The agency may refuse to tell you how the database will be used – or, worse, deny that such a database exists at all. In these times, we must consider the worst case scenario: that every layer of technology added to our democratic institutions has the potential to oppose civil liberties.
Already, there are signs that this future may come true.
In a video of a Maine resident that has been widely shared online, an ICE agent told a law enforcement observer that he was taking a photo of his license plate to put him on a “nice little database” that would label him a “domestic terrorist.” (A spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin, later told CNN that “there is no ‘domestic terrorist’ information maintained by DHS.”) In any case, the Department of Homeland Security issued a broad internal directive to ICE agents in Minneapolis to collect “photographs, license plates, references and general information on hotels, protesters, protesters.”
Then on Friday, the New York Times reported that ICE was exploring ways to integrate advertising technology and the data associated with it into its operations, specifically asking potential vendors how much data could be collected from “people, businesses, devices, places, transactions, public records.” There is no word that ICE has a special decoder ring that only goes after criminals.
Emily Tucker, director of Georgetown University’s Center on Privacy and Technology, suggested that the agency may be creating a surveillance system that, in my estimation, would make the “Little People Report” look like child’s play. Homeland Security, he said, is “increasingly emphasizing ‘collaboration’ in contracting.” That’s a strong sign that the agency wants to connect the databases, which could include those with your biometric data, employment data, driving records, credit reports, tax data, social media data, cell phone location data and automated license plate reader data. “They want information about every aspect of everyone’s life,” he said.
Turbocharge terror
When combined with facial recognition and social media monitoring routinely deployed by the Department of Homeland Security, that data could fuel ICE’s terror campaign in the short term and undermine American civil liberties in the long term. If this surveillance infrastructure reaches its technological potential, it would be a leviathan that our 250-year-old Constitution is unlikely to contain.
I spoke on the phone last week with Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., has been trying, though, for years to pass legislation to protect Americans’ personal information from federal infiltration. Another such bill passed the House in 2024 but failed in the Senate. He said the federal government is “weaponizing private information” against citizens and non-citizens. The biggest concern, he said, was not just the information about us all available for purchase, but how the states allow the federal government to scatter and seize. What the management will not buy, it will simply take.
Your state and federal data are things you’re obligated to provide, data you’re concerned about the accuracy of because an error could affect your Social Security benefits or put you in trouble with the IRS. The Trump administration has been taking advantage of government-level data compiled by a third-party nonprofit called Nlets. It was created to help local, national and international organizations share data, including DMV data, about known criminal activity. In practice, there are very few restrictions on who can use that data and how they can use it. A handful of states have placed restrictions on ICE’s access to DMV data stored with Nlets, but most give federal agencies self-help, direct access to it. So a tool intended to make DMV data sharing less controversial for law enforcement agencies also serves as a privacy Trojan horse, because agencies don’t need a warrant or warrant to look at it.
You don’t need to understand how digital tracking works or have a degree in constitutional law to understand what’s happening to your privacy. You only need to know this: Whatever happens to your data, it’s important enough to the most lawless administration in American history to be collected and aggregated. It’s important enough for a federal cowboy to keep one hand on his phone as the other hand reaches for his gun.
Tressie McMillan Cottom is a columnist for The New York Times.
