The Trump administration’s push to expand surveillance tools for immigration enforcement has left many communities under unprecedented digital scrutiny, raising alarms over privacy intrusions and the misuse of personal data.
Once framed as efforts to deter crime, fight fraud and detect undocumented immigrants, this widening surveillance system could now threaten to erode the privacy rights of all Americans, experts warn.
The Privacy Act of 1974 limits how federal agencies handle our personal data, establishing that information may only be used for the purpose it was originally provided for. This principle of purpose limitation, however, is being tested by the expansive surveillance measures pursued under the Trump administration.
Nicole Alvarez, senior analyst for technology policy at the Center for American Progress, warns that the administration is repurposing sensitive federal records to build a “digital watchtower,” a rapidly growing surveillance system that makes it easier to target both immigrants and non-immigrants. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is driving this initiative, undertaking a full-scale structural transformation of data systems by consolidating separate agency databases into a single unified system.
“You can think of this like merging everyone’s separate filing cabinets into one giant searchable filing cabinet,” Alvarez said during a briefing held by American Community Media on Sept. 5.
Called secondary data abuse, information provided to one federal agency for a specific purpose could now be reused by different agencies for entirely different purposes. This practice could allow federal authorities to build detailed profiles of individuals and use them to make federal decisions. Alvarez warned that the absence of clear limitations or accountability creates opportunities for both accidental and intentional misuse.
“Rather than focusing on coordination between agencies that respects existing boundaries,
we are seeing efforts to consolidate data in ways that eliminate legal safeguards and reduce transparency,” Alvarez said. “This kind of consolidation expands the government’s capacity to monitor individuals.”
Personal information provided to the federal government for purposes like applying for benefits, filing taxes, registering for public services or even just engaging with agencies in any official capacity can now easily be used against individuals. These risks raise concerns about the safety of long-standing services, a worry that is only increasing as agencies have already begun sharing data.
On April 7, the IRS and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) finalized a data sharing agreement to allow sensitive taxpayer information to aid deportation efforts. With this cross-agency partnership, Alvarez said tax information submitted in good faith could now be weaponized against individuals and undermine the IRS’s role as a neutral body.
“The agreement sets a dangerous precedent because it erodes the IRS’s role as a neutral financial authority with strong privacy protections. In the future, we could see actions to weaponize taxpayer data in other ways, like to pressure individuals and institutions or to retaliate against them,” Alvarez said. “Because the IRS databases are not built for immigration enforcement, there’s a real risk that American citizens would also be subject to privacy violations or erroneous immigration actions due to simple administrative and data mix-ups.”
Similarly, Medicaid enrollment records have been used to identify undocumented immigrants, which Alvarez calls a break from the traditional norms of privacy by “turning healthcare safety nets into a surveillance pipeline.”
These data sharing practices could have wide-reaching consequences that extend far beyond privacy violations. Misuse of personal information can erode trust in public institutions and deter individuals from seeking services they need.
“The effect is that when people see the government repurpose their information in ways that feel retaliatory or are unpredictable, they begin to opt out,” Alvarez said. “They may avoid filing taxes, they may forgo needed medical care for themselves or their children. They may not apply for benefits that they’re entitled to. These are not, like, irrational choices, they are survival instincts in a system that no longer feels safe.”
The repurposing of personal information is particularly likely to dissuade undocumented immigrants from filing taxes, leading to a significant loss in revenue for the federal government.
In 2022, undocumented immigrants paid an estimated $90 billion in federal, state and local taxes, according to the Institute on Tax and Economic Policy. Even a 1 percentage point reduction of tax compliance would cut federal revenue by $40 billion. With more than one-third of undocumented immigrants’ tax dollars being used to fund programs like Social Security and Medicare, a reduction could impact public services and shift the burden to other taxpayers, Alvarez said.
“When people disengage from public systems, those systems inherently become weaker. They become more unfair and less democratic, and this has ripple effects in that it makes it harder for agencies to then serve communities effectively,” Alvarez said. “Ironically, it undermines long-term goals like fraud prevention and civic participation. So, it’s not just about protecting privacy, it’s also about protecting the functionality and fairness of government systems.”
As digital surveillance systems amplify under the current administration, experts say that surveillance of immigrants is only the starting point. Alvarez said these practices often begin with politically targeted groups but can quickly broaden, leaving all individuals vulnerable. With President Trump intensifying his attacks on political opponents and those he deems disloyal, many fear that government surveillance will be used to silence all dissent against the administration. Politically motivated surveillance will likely cause frightening repercussions for the health of American democracy and the future of free speech.
“The misuse of sensitive records, it’s all designed to scale, and once it’s in place, it can and will be used against other groups, such as journalists, protesters, voters and everyday Americans,” Alvarez said.
The Georgetown Center on Privacy & Technology published a 2022 report called American Dragnet, which found that ICE uses digital surveillance to monitor the lives of most people living in the U.S. In 2024, the center published the Raiding the Genome report that detailed the drastic expansion of a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) program to collect DNA samples from thousands of people daily. These samples are added to a federal policing database called CODIS, used to identify individuals who committed crimes in the past.
The report, however, found that DHS was adding profiles regardless of whether a person had committed a crime, fueling concerns that law enforcement will be used against individuals for arbitrary reasons.
“These massive surveillance powers, whether they be our personal information or our genetic information, this power is now in the hands of an increasingly authoritarian government, and we’ve seen that government already use those powers for not only immigration enforcement, but also for political repression,” Emerald Tse, Justice Fellow at the Georgetown Center, said. “We’ve seen government agents arrest and detain activists and union leaders. When elected officials have attempted to check the current administration’s abuses of power, we’ve also seen the federal government arrest and even bring criminal charges against those elected.”
Heightened cases of device searches at the border are yet another example of the deepening surveillance measures pursued by the administration. Any traveler legally crossing a U.S. port of entry is subject to a search of their cell phone, laptop or other device, but recent cases signal an accelerated approach.
In 2018, a policy was established granting the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) the authority to search devices, either through manual searches or forensic searches. While manual searches involve scrolling or tapping through a traveler’s device, a forensic search uses external software to download the entire hard drive of data. Between April 2025 and June, CBP searched 14,899 devices, a spike by 16.7 percent from 2022.
While such searches can be routine, their increasingly political undertones reflect characteristics of a traditional authoritarian playbook. Online monitoring of personal social media pages, messages or other data is a direct hindrance to the values of free expression.
In fact, just last March, a French scientist was denied entry to the U.S. because of anti-Trump messages found on his phone. In April, pro-Palestinian activist Amir Makled was flagged at the border and ordered to hand over his phone and passcode, or risk device confiscation.
Sophia Cope, Senior Staff Attorney on the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said these practices are a way to circumvent the Fourth Amendment and carry out extensive, warrantless searches without legal justification.
“CBP and ICE officials readily admitted that they will seek to search the device of a traveler, not when the traveler is the person who’s the target of the investigation or is under suspicion, but because they think the traveler might have either valuable information on someone else that they’re associated with,” Cope said. “That, to me, is absolutely crazy because the government is violating the privacy of travelers to get at other information of interest to them.”
As the Trump administration has passed the halfway point of its first year in power, questions continue to mount about the tactics used to develop unprecedented policy. It remains unclear as to how far the administration will go to amass control over citizens, but digital surveillance will likely be a key cornerstone of extending federal monitoring to the wider populace.
“This surveillance puts everyone at risk, not just immigrants,” Tse said. “There are certainly some communities that are more at risk than others. But we know that the current administration has already targeted and detained people regardless of their immigration status.”
