How President Trump’s mass deportation plan could use AI to crack down on immigration

President-elect Donald Trump’s main campaign promise is to begin mass deportations of illegal aliens in the United States. During a campaign stop in Tucson, Arizona, on September 12, President Trump promised to “launch the largest mass deportation operation in our nation’s history.”

President Trump’s appointment of Thomas Homan as “border czar” and Stephen Miller as deputy chief of staff for policy, two officials seen as hard-liners on immigration, indicate that the Trump administration’s repressive approach is This suggests that they will fulfill that promise and actively try to do so. However, the Trump transition team has not disclosed details.

President Trump has said he would begin mass deportations of criminals, but also vowed to end Temporary Protected Status for individuals. In a brief post-election interview with NBC News, he said there would be “no choice” but to pursue mass deportations after the election results, and that there would be “no price.”

Homan, a former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said earlier this year that “no one is off the table. If you’re in the country illegally, you better look over your shoulder.” I vowed to manage it. This country has never been seen before. ”

However, implementing these pledges is logistically difficult. Artificial intelligence may help.

While AI was not widely used during the first Trump administration’s immigration crackdowns, the technology has become more available and widely deployed in many systems and agencies, and President Biden’s administration has The organization began to focus on AI.

In April, the Department of Homeland Security established the Artificial Intelligence Safety and Security Commission to help establish boundaries and protocols for the use of artificial intelligence. The 2025 DHS budget includes $5 million to open an AI office in the DHS Office of the Chief Information Officer. According to the DHS budget memo, the department is responsible for promoting and accelerating the “responsible use” of AI by establishing standards, policies, and oversight to support the expanded adoption of AI across DHS. Masu.

“AI is a transformative technology that can advance unprecedented national interests,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said at the new board’s inauguration. They also pose real risks that can be mitigated by taking appropriate action.”

There are now concerns among experts that DHS’s mission will shift to focus on deportations and use untested AI to assist. Security experts close to DHS are concerned about how the emboldened and redirected agency will leverage AI.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson would not speculate on how AI might be used by the Trump administration.

President Trump’s transition and Homan did not respond to requests for comment.

Petra Molnar, a lawyer and anthropologist who specializes in the impact of migration technology on people crossing borders and author of The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence We have been researching the use of As a teaching assistant at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, he is involved in research on drones and robodogs. She has criticized the use of AI at the border under Democratic administrations, but she believes AI will be increasingly weaponized under the Trump administration.

“Knowing that the Trump administration has signaled that it wants to carry out the largest mass deportation in U.S. history, and the fact that they have these tools at their disposal, it’s not just the border, but the interior. “A surveillance network could be built to capture communities across the United States,” Molnar said, adding that an entire industry ecosystem is being built to police borders and immigration.

“The private sector has a big influence on the growing border industrial problem,” Molnar said, adding that private companies are leading the way in the introduction of robodogs (innocuous names like Snoopy and Sniffer), drones and AI. . Injected tower.

“While many of the surveillance technologies were expanded under Democratic administrations, there were signals to the incoming administration that technology would be a tool to help them achieve their goals,” Molnar said.

AI Immigration Dragnet vs. AI Deregulation and Growth

Remaya Campbell, Acting Secretary of Homeland Security for the District of Columbia, said AI has the potential to bypass traditional processes and automate immigration-related decision-making.

“AI could be used to broadly identify individuals for deportation, with little regard for privacy or due process,” Campbell said, adding that AI decision-making systems could be used to identify individuals for deportation, with little regard for privacy or due process. He added that it works. “And in the Trump administration, that could certainly mean reinforcing intersectional bias to align with political priorities,” she said. “At a minimum, we can expect that AI will be used as a tool for systemic bias and authoritarian control, rather than as a tool for efficiency, fairness, and safety in immigration-related decision-making,” Campbell said. he added.

Neil Sahota, AI advisor for the U.N. AI for Good initiative, said AI already has a strong presence in controlling the vast and difficult-to-monitor U.S. border, and its use will expand under the Trump administration. said it shares these concerns.

Sahota said DHS Customs and Border Protection already has AI-powered drones with machine learning capabilities that can identify anomalous patterns that signal illegal crossings and intercept people, animals, and vehicles. The company is introducing drones that can differentiate between the two and minimize false alarms. AI-powered sensor towers provide 24/7 monitoring, reducing response times and freeing up human resources.

Sahota said, “The Trump administration is expected to further strengthen AI-based surveillance, introduce autonomous patrols, and expand biometric testing.”

While this could improve border security, it could also raise privacy concerns, especially for people living near the border. Sahota added that the Trump administration’s use of AI could extend beyond security and deportation assistance. “AI surveillance systems will be a cornerstone of Mr. Trump’s deportation strategy,” Sahotra said. Sahota added that “enhanced AI has the potential to speed up deportations, but this comes with the potential for rights violations and racial profiling.”

These systems use facial recognition and behavioral analysis to identify people suspected of being in the country illegally, but he cautioned that these systems don’t always get it right. “How do we deal with situations where AI makes mistakes in determining people’s immigration status? What happens when the system incorrectly flags a legal resident or citizen for deportation? It’s devastating for our community,” Sahota said.

Laura McCreary, senior policy director at Unidos US, the nation’s largest Hispanic advocacy group, said AI accuracy issues are well known, with systems drawing inaccurate conclusions and data on people of color He said that accuracy tends to be low.

DMV records at borders and airports, utility bills, and facial recognition technology are all tools that can be enhanced with AI to pursue deportations.

“These technologies can be modified, changed, and have different guardrails in different administrations. Concerns about mass deportations are likely to increase as immigration authorities’ use of AI increases, outstripping their ability to monitor public data. It’s about making it stronger,” McCreary said.

She says it’s inevitable that AI will take over the American public.

“Because there are U.S. citizens living with people of different immigration statuses, and those people can get caught up and the due process rights of people who are here legally can be violated, and that’s very problematic. Because it’s an unavoidable consequence of the overuse of this type of immigration at the heart of technology,” McCleary said.

But Marina Shepelski, CEO, co-founder and immigration attorney at New York-based Shepelski Law Group, doesn’t see the Trump administration’s AI policies as a dystopian technology to be feared. He said no. “He is a businessman and would see value in allowing AI to advance and grow to make the lives of lawyers, doctors, scientists and others like me easier,” Schepersky said. .

She believes that under the Trump administration, AI will blossom and regulations will be eased. “Hopefully, with Elon Musk on his side, President Trump will be able to get more foreign high-tech AI experts through faster and less cumbersome procedures to improve AI and reduce the current clumsiness.” They’ll encourage you to skip it and come to the United States,” Schepelsky said. “I’m not wary of Trump being the next president, and I may not like all of his policies, but when it comes to AI, I want to promote the growth of AI and improve laws and regulations. I think it’s going to make it more flexible, to allow AI to grow. ”