Saira Hussain
@sairahussain.bsky.social
Senior Staff Attorney at EFF focused on racial and immigrant justice, surveillance, & tech. Asian Law Caucus alum. Baker & dessert aficionado. Views my own.
ICE cannot do what it’s doing without local law enforcement. They need their manpower and infrastructure. That means if you want to stop ICE you are going to have to confront police collaboration and police power. I’m sorry but progressive hopes of avoiding this conflict are a recipe for failure.
to be clear, the admin is alleged to have deported AT LEAST 25,447 individuals TO COUNTRIES THAT ARE NOT THEIR OWN with, evidently, ZERO PROTECTIONS. this is a scandal and crime of historic proportions.
The Deportation Project Map
Between 2025 and August 2026, the Trump administration deported over 25,000 people to countries other than their country of origin. Very few of these removals were publicly announced by the US. The De...
forbiddenstories.org
David Kaye@davidakaye.bsky.social · 2w agothe @forbidden-stories.bsky.social investigation is so deeply important. put the illegality to one side. the trump admin is brazenly sending ppl to third countries, lacking any cxn, without any guarantee they won't be sent on for torture, abuse, persecution... it's horrible.
“We don’t actually know if [automated license plate readers are] functioning in the way that they’re supposed to in terms of helping public safety, but we do know that they are definitely invading people’s privacy,” EFF’s @sairahussain.bsky.social told @lancasteronline.bsky.social.
Lancaster County lawmakers support regulating Flock cameras
Across Lancaster County, video cameras are recording the license plates of passing cars, along with their vehicle make, model and paint color, and storing that information in searchable databases.
lancasteronline.com
“You’re not going to be able to stop this mass surveillance technology by moving to another vendor,” EFF’s @sairahussain.bsky.social told @theverge.com. “The only thing that is going to solve this whole problem is not relying on this technology.”
What happens after a town de-Flocks
Flock is just one piece of the mass surveillance puzzle.
theverge.com
I was in a public space that had a TV news channel on ("news"), and it was one of those useless "here's a white lady in court" stories where they do 24/7 coverage for a few weeks, and I genuinely wonder: how do we get them to do the same coverage of our gov murdering people in international waters?
EFF’s position is that ALPR mass surveillance—the indiscriminate, continuous collection and retention of location data on every driver, regardless of suspicion—should not exist. Because it nonetheless does, EFF also urges courts and state legislatures to impose strict, enforceable restrictions.
EFF's Policy Position on ALPR Surveillance: Eliminate It and Reduce Its Harms
Automated license plate readers (ALPRs) build a searchable map of everywhere a driver goes, fed into databases that police, ICE, and private vendors can query after the fact. Networked across a city, ...
eff.org
Breaking: A federal court has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from enforcing an immigration policy targeting noncitizen researchers, advocates, fact-checkers, and trust and safety workers based on their work. knightcolumbia.org/content/fede...
Federal Court Suspends Trump Immigration Policy Targeting Technology Researchers
knightcolumbia.org
Cities across the nation are re-evaluating whether to allow mass surveillance by Flock ALPR cameras. Want to find out whether your local police are using Flock to scan for immigrants targeted by ICE? EFF tells you how. www.eff.org/deeplinks/2...
Are Your Local Police Using Flock Safety ALPRs to Scan for Immigrants?
When a car passes an automated license plate reader (ALPR), its plate is captured and instantly compared against a list of vehicles that police are actively looking for or that police have identified
eff.org
The most elegant tense in English, the Law Enforcement Exonerative
Hamilton Nolan@hamiltonnolan.bsky.social · 3mo agoNews organizations should periodically stop and look in the mirror and ask themselves “Have we internalized copspeak to the point that our headlines indistinguishable from police department email subject lines?”
When a license plate is captured by an automated license plate reader (ALPR), it’s instantly compared against a list of vehicles that the police are actively looking for, known as a “hotlist.” EFF has learned that one of these hotlists targets immigrants on behalf of ICE. www.eff.org/deeplinks/2...
Are Your Local Police Using Flock Safety ALPRs to Scan for Immigrants?
When a car passes an automated license plate reader (ALPR), its plate is captured and instantly compared against a list of vehicles that police are actively looking for or that police have identified
eff.org
Meta’s conclusion that it can avoid scrutiny by releasing a privacy invasive product during a time of political crisis is craven and morally bankrupt. It is also dead wrong. www.eff.org/deeplinks/20...
Seven Billion Reasons for Facebook to Abandon its Face Recognition Plans
Meta’s analysis that it can avoid scrutiny by releasing a privacy invasive product during a time of political crisis is craven and morally bankrupt. It is also dead wrong.
eff.org
reminds of that old bible story of how people were hungry and jesus conjured himself a security detail bsky.app/profile/carl...
Carl Quintanilla@carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 8mo ago“.. using millions of dollars from the former U.S. foreign aid agency to pay for the security detail of Russell Vought ..” @reuters.com www.reuters.com/world/us/whi...
"Although the law is clear, deep-state actors in the federal government have for decades" thwarted me, I will write in my next brief.
Orin Kerr@orinkerr.bsky.social · 8mo agoAs far as I know, this is DHS's first effort to explain their position that I-205 forms allow entry into the home. They rely on the dicta in the 1960 Abel case (before Payton) and re-imagine the plurality opinion in Lucas as if it were the majority (and then overrely on it).
If nothing else today, I got USA Today to print my analogy of the significance of ICE administrative warrants. www.usatoday.com/story/news/n...
The guy genuinely gave a shit. And the empathy vampires murdered him for it.
daviss@daviss.org · 8mo agoCNN reporting that a week before Alex Pretti was killed, 5 agents tackled him and he suffered a broken rib. CNN says he stopped his car after he saw ICE agents interacting with a family on foot and began to blow his whistle. Source tells CNN Pretti believed “That day he thought he was going to die”
Literally 10 days ago, Hoeven introduced a bill to make concealed carry easier across the nation to help "law-abiding citizens to more freely exercise their Second Amendment rights." www.hoeven.senate.gov/news/news-re...
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 8mo agoSen. Hoeven: "We can't just go by what we saw on videos on social media. We've got to get the facts. But in a situation where an individual appears to have approached law enforcement, intervened while they're trying to do their job, and he has a loaded handgun, think about that."
New: Alex Pretti, the man killed by the Trump-Vance mob of agents was an outdoorsmen, a mountain biker, an ICU nurse who "would go out of his way to help," say Veterans Affairs colleagues. Cheerful. Funny. Gentle. And still, per sources, Trump officials are urging staff to call him a "terrorist."
DHS Shooting Victim in Minneapolis Was a ‘Sweet’ and ‘Principled Person’
Zeteo spoke with two doctors who worked with Alex Pretti, a nurse who is the latest victim of Trump’s violent invasion of Minnesota.
zeteo.com
The official policy of the government of the United States of America is that they will murder anyone they want, that they will tell any lie necessary to justify that murder, and that no one who resists them has any rights they are bound to respect. /1
ICE is now responsible for 66% of the homicides in Minneapolis this year.
in trying to understand what makes ICE and CBP so dangerous right now, it is tempting to imagine some new lack of training or experience or professionalism—and not grapple with the truth that a white nationalist movement has put more power and force behind their existing mission
“Federal agents briefly detained our reporter at the scene, who says he was tackled to the ground and had a gun put in his face.”
BREAKING: Federal agent shoots man in south Minneapolis
A Bring Me The News reporter was near the scene, and recorded multiple gunshots.
bringmethenews.com
Rapid responders still out there, tracking ICE. In spite of everything, even now. Heroes
I am trying not to post on these events in this state of mind but: I hope people understand what the observers are doing is brave and dangerous.
🚨HOLY CRAP. An ICE whistleblower just revealed a secret memo authorizing ICE officers to break into homes without a judicial warrant, which DHS's own legal training materials say is unconstitutional! ICE then hid the memo from the public, passing it along by word of mouth and private conversation.
The Associated Press@apnews.com · 9mo agoBREAKING: Immigration officers are asserting sweeping power to enter homes without a judge’s warrant, a memo obtained by AP says.
I would argue that the case for dismantling ICE has, at this point, virtually nothing to do with larger questions of immigration enforcement and reform, it's just clearly incompatible with a free and democratic society to maintain a secret police force with sweeping and arbitrary authority.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick@reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 9mo agoSenator Gallego weighs in as well. Note that at the start of 2025 he was considered a *moderate* on immigration and co-sponsored the Laken Riley Act. Him and many other Dems have been increasingly horrified at what ICE is doing and shifted away from a "more enforcement" focus.
People not in Minnesota: please read this excellent summary of what life is like in Minneapolis since the murderous scum ICE swarmed here. And more are on their way. By local reporter / writer / bike dude / legend @dbrauer.net .
