Power

ICE Finally Removes Survivors’ Personal Information From Database

An immigrant rights organization warned ICE it was putting survivors’ lives in danger.

The Tahirih Justice Center discovered that a public DHS database included the federally protected information of girls and women who were victims of crimes. John Moore/Getty Images

After weeks of pressure from advocacy groups, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was forced to correct its “inadvertent” mistake of making public the federally protected personal identifying information of immigrant women and girls fleeing violence.

In an effort to further demonize undocumented immigrants who, according to President Donald Trump, “prey on our very innocent citizens,” ICE launched the Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE) office in April, almost immediately endangering some of the nation’s most vulnerable people: survivors of domestic violence, human trafficking, sexual assault, and other crimes.

The VOICE office purports to assist crime victims—but only victims who are U.S. citizens alleging the crime they experienced was perpetrated by an undocumented person.

One of the services offered is the use of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Victim Information and Notification Exchange (VINE), an online database that provides the personal identifying information of undocumented immigrants in custody and enables users to receive automated custody status information about “criminal aliens.”

The reasoning, according to ICE, is that DHS-VINE enables users to access information “they need to feel secure.” But the Tahirih Justice Center, a national advocacy organization that provides legal services to immigrant and refugee women, quickly discovered that the database included the federally protected information of girls and women who were victims of crimes.

The database, according to the advocacy organization, included identifying information of “victims of crimes such as human trafficking, domestic violence, and sexual assault.” Having this information public and easily accessible to anyone with an internet connection not only put lives at risk—it was illegal.

These crime victims are eligible for immigration relief under the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) of 1994 and the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Prevention Act of 2000.

After not receiving a response to an initial May 12 letter to ICE acting director Thomas Homan, the Tahirih Justice Center followed up on May 25 with a letter outlining the special legal protections for these applicants’ confidentiality. The organization reminded the federal immigration agency that survivors’ inclusion in the public database is a “violation of federal statute which carries significant penalties.”

“These confidentiality provisions are essential, since perpetrators may try to locate and harm victims, undermine and interfere with their cases in order to maintain power and control, or jeopardize victims’ eligibility for relief,” the letter reads.

If it was not possible to “immediately remove” these applicants from the database, the organization asked that the federal immigration agency “take down the entire database no later than Friday, May 26, 2017.”

ICE did not respond until July 14.

“Any disclosure of federally protected information that may have occurred in the context of the DHS-VINE system …. was completely inadvertent,” ICE’s letter said. “Any protected information that may have been inadvertently disclosed in the past is no longer available on the DHS-VINE database.”

The advocacy organization reported that it will continue “keeping vigilant watch, monitoring the database to ensure that survivors’ information is not disclosed again.”