Mission Creep: AI Surveillance at DHS Crosses Dangerous Line Into Tracking Americans

The artificial intelligence (AI) tools built to guard America’s borders are now extending their policing powers into America’s neighborhoods. What began as AI-powered immigration enforcement confined primarily to our southern border is rapidly becoming something else: a quiet expansion of government surveillance into everyday life.

Immigration Enforcement Could Come to Your Town. Here’s What You Can Do to Prepare.

Minneapolis has been the latest battleground for the Trump administration in its ongoing campaign of aggressive immigration enforcement. Here’s what states and localities can do if immigration agents come to their communities.

This week, 330,000 Haitians who have been living and working in the U.S. legally – many for decades – were set to lose their Temporary Protected Status. The Trump administration had previously announced that it would terminate TPS for Haitians on February 3.

The administration claims that Haiti no longer qualifies for the designation, though the State Department currently warns U.S. citizens not to visit the country due to high rates of crime, terrorism, kidnapping, and civil unrest.

Thanks to a federal court order, Haitians will keep their immigration protections for now. The administration plans to appeal the ruling, potentially leaving the decision up to the Supreme Court.

This fact sheet from the American Immigration Council provides an overview of TPS, how countries are designated, and which countries have TPS as of November 2025.

Read more: Temporary Protected Status (TPS): An Overview

This week, a federal appeals court refused to reconsider our victory blocking an extreme, unconstitutional law in Iowa. This law would have made it a crime for certain immigrants to live in Iowa, even if they are now authorized to be in the United States. 

If it had gone into effect, the law would have allowed local police and state courts to arrest and prosecute people for immigration status, creating huge risks of abuse. It also could have permitted states to invent and enforce their own immigration system – so a person could be welcomed in one state and arrested in another, just for crossing a state border. This goes against the Constitution, which puts enforcing immigration law in the hands of the federal government. 

Thanks to this new ruling, protections remain in place and families in Iowa don't have to live in fear of a patchwork system of immigration laws.

Read more: Challenging Iowa’s State Deportation Law

USA Today: Will that warehouse become an ICE detention center? Locals push back.

Slate: The Frightening, Very Real Tool ICE Agents Have to Add You to a ‘Nice Little Database’ if You Attend a Protest

Wall Street Journal: States Rush to Remove Hurdles Stopping U.S. Agents From Being Sued for Shootings

Sacramento Bee: New tactics replace immigration court arrests as DHS seeks to end asylum cases

Rolling Stone: ICE's use of AI will lead to big mistakes. Maybe that's the point

American Immigration Council
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United States 

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