ICE expands surveillance state in new and awful ways

So on Nov. 12, we learned that Immigration and Customs Enforcement was going to hire bounty hunters to track down immigrants and feed them to ICE. But what if government officials made that much, much worse? Welcome to this week. 

Fam, is it a good sign of a healthy democracy if the government starts paying people to snitch on their neighbors? 

404 Media is reporting that ICE is recruiting ex-military and ex-law enforcement officers to—you guessed it—track down immigrants and feed them to ICE. For their troubles, they get $300 for every person whose address they—allegedly, come on!—verify and then turn over to the gaping, vicious maw of ICE. 

Sure, this is theoretically limited to ex-military and ex-cops, but those folks aren’t magically still in the military or law enforcement. They’re private citizens with no particular expertise, and there is certainly no reason that this can’t just expand to anyone who is willing to take $300 a pop to surveil and betray their neighbors. 

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Where the bounty hunter thing was extremely bad, at least in that situation, ICE would be giving names to licensed professionals who track people down for a living. Yes, the bounty hunter industry is already marred by a lack of oversight and rife with abuse. But at the bare minimum, they are also people who literally track down other people for a living and have a license to do so. 

But since that doesn’t seem to be enough, it’s now time to just throw open the doors—and toss some cash—to anyone craven enough to do this. 404 Media found that at least one government contractor appears to be soliciting applications via LinkedIn. It’s somehow grimly hilarious that this is all taking place on the world’s most boring social network, the place where CEOs burble on about their “rise and grind” routine. Wouldn’t this sort of thing be more successful over at X? It’s already a Nazi bar, so it seems like it would be a dandy place to find terrible people.

It’s not a stretch to say that you can draw a direct line from SB8, the Texas bounty hunter law, to this awful plan. In that instance, Texas empowered literally anyone to sue someone who aided or abetted someone obtaining an abortion. This weaponization of private actors has led to things like a dude suing his ex-wife’s friends because they may have helped her get a medication abortion.

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In Texas, if the abortion bounty hunters prevail in court—and the law is written so that it is nearly certain they would do so—they get at least $10,000. Whoo! Makes that $300 per immigrant look pretty paltry. To get your money in Texas requires a trial, but to get your ICE money, you just have to slide over some addresses. 

There’s no information on what happens if, as is completely inevitable, some ex-deputy sheriff in need of some extra cash turns over the wrong person accidentally. And of course, there’s no information as to what happens if, as is also completely inevitable, someone decides to deliberately turn in someone they know full well is not undocumented, either for harassment, a quick buck, or both. 

Can these random ex-cops be successfully sued? They’re not federal agents, they don’t work for the government at all, and they’re not licensed to track people down. This should be a slam dunk, with these folks getting sued into oblivion for taking part in this. Somehow, though, it seems unlikely that there will be any consequences. 

The people who will do this are going to be the absolute worst people in the world. 

Imagine getting hyped to turn your neighbor over to the most vicious, lawless government agency of our lifetime. For $300. 

What a paltry sum to sell your soul for.

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