{"id":21978,"date":"2019-10-07T09:32:22","date_gmt":"2019-10-07T13:32:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/?p=21978"},"modified":"2019-10-07T09:32:24","modified_gmt":"2019-10-07T13:32:24","slug":"ice-media-bias-facebook-immigrationreform-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/2019\/10\/07\/ice-media-bias-facebook-immigrationreform-com\/","title":{"rendered":"ICE Is Not Big Brother"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Business Insider<\/a><\/em>recently published an article condemning U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement\u2019s use of fake Facebook<\/a> accounts when mounting sting operations against \u201cundocumented immigrants.\u201d According to the publication, \u201cThe practice violates Facebook’s rules, which prohibit \u2018inauthentic behavior\u2019 including running accounts with fake names or accounts that mislead people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Business Insider<\/em> piece echoes a New York Times<\/a><\/em>\u201cexpos\u00e9\u201d which purports to explain \u201chow ICE picks its targets in the surveillance age.\u201d The NYT<\/em> breathlessly decries ICE use of \u201cstate D.M.V. databases and information products like CLEAR, from Thomson Reuters, to target immigrants.\u201d And it claims that the agency is pushing the envelope of acceptable behavior because its \u201cwork is regulated by only a set of outdated privacy laws and the limits of the technology.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The obvious intent of both writings is to imply that ICE is improperly engaging in unfair tactics to trick illegal aliens into revealing themselves. \u201cBig Brother<\/a>\u201d is intruding into the private lives of immigrants and, in the process, destroying our civil rights. But that\u2019s a monumentally dopey argument, for a number of reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First off, as FAIR<\/a> has repeatedly noted, illegal aliens don\u2019t have any statutorily protected right not to get caught. Federal information protection laws such as the Privacy Act of 1974 don\u2019t give immigration violators special license to conceal their crimes from enforcement authorities. Any government or commercial information databases that ICE can lawfully access are fair game in rooting out and prosecuting violations of the Immigration and Nationality Act. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As far as social media platforms go, lawbreakers who post\ninformation that enables law enforcement to identify them or set them up for\narrest do so at their own peril. Neither Facebook\u2019s terms of service, nor any\nfederal, state, or local laws, prohibit law enforcement officers from using\ninformation published by an offender as an investigative lead. That\u2019s why\nneither of the aforementioned articles mentions a single rule, regulation or\nstatute that ICE might be violating. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And while Business Insider<\/em> makes a big deal out of ICE\u2019s alleged violation of Facebook\u2019s terms of service<\/a>, the company\u2019s \u201cAuthenticity Policy<\/a>\u201d is impermissibly vague, at best. A large percentage of Facebook users operate under aliases and nicknames, rather than the \u201cname they go by in everyday life.\u201d Many more maintain multiple accounts. It is difficult to see how Facebook can enforce this policy to protect immigration law breakers, and frustrate federal law enforcement efforts, without reviewing all active accounts, in order to hold all users to the same standard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Furthermore, going back to 1895<\/a>, the Supreme Court<\/a> has acknowledged that sting operations are<\/em> a standard law enforcement tactic, having repeatedly<\/a> held that, \u201cin the detection of many types of crime, the Government is entitled to use decoys and to conceal the identity of its agents.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

More recently, a federal district court in New Jersey held in U.S. v. Gatson<\/a> that police may establish fake social media accounts, without a warrant, when investigating law breakers. The fact is, miscreants don\u2019t often seek out police and confess their misdeeds, that\u2019s why detective work is necessary in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Immigration law-breakers are violating Title 8 of the United\nStates Code. They are subject to investigation and arrest, just like anyone\nelse who is disobeying federal law. When ICE uses various public and private\ndatabases, sting operations, and other ruses to draw out illegal aliens and status\nviolators, it\u2019s simply applying standard law enforcement techniques. There is\nnothing remotely improper or sinister about anything that ICE is doing in its\nefforts to protect America\u2019s public safety, national security and economic\nwellbeing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It would be nice if the mainstream media recognized that ICE isn\u2019t the problem<\/a>. Immigration law breakers are.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Business Insiderrecently published an article condemning U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement\u2019s use of fake Facebook accounts when mounting sting operations against \u201cundocumented immigrants.\u201d According to the publication, \u201cThe practice violates Facebook’s rules, which prohibit \u2018inauthentic behavior\u2019 including running accounts with fake names or accounts that mislead people.\u201d The Business Insider piece echoes a New York<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":12563,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[6],"tags":[292,1524,47,71],"yst_prominent_words":[6645,6642,1995,6643,6636,2243,1918,2008,1963,3599,6637,2813,2030,6640,2159,2748,6644,6638,6639,6641],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21978"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/52"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21978"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21979,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21978\/revisions\/21979"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21978"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.immigrationreform.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=21978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}