An Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Calexico, California, March 21, 2005. From “Neighborhood Watch” programs to crime hotlines, the US justifies profiling by creating an army of snitches. (Photo: Ann Johansson / The New York Times)
This April, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the launch of the Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement Office (VOICE). The central feature is a hotline built to “assist victims of crimes committed by criminal aliens” by providing updates on immigrants’ removal from the US. The office is transparent in its intent to bolster an atmosphere of anti-immigrant paranoia, and the community response has been laudable — within hours, the line was rendered unusable as prank callers flooded it with false testimonies. But this hotline is nothing out of the ordinary. A dedicated tip line for reporting migrants already exists, and it predates the Trump Administration by a decade: ICE has maintained a hotline since its inception in 2003. The surveillance of non-white populations is a practice that is etched deeply into US institutions, as is the delegation of this effort to private citizens whenever possible — with devastating impacts on accountability.
Founded in the aftermath of 9/11, ICE’s reliance on rabid anti-immigrant sentiment is no accident — it’s a foundational tenet. The Homeland Security Act, which first authorized the program, earmarked $170 million toward racialized screening programs in its first year alone. It further sanctioned the registration and monitoring of “aliens from certain designated countries.” The list of countries subject to scrutiny was not finite but could be amended at will as specified in recurring notices published in the Federal Register, leaving noncitizens subject to the changing and arbitrary whims of racist hysteria. Amidst an immobilizing climate of fear, the act was…