The Stakeholders
Who is involved?
There are multiple stakeholders involved in this case. Marginalized communities are the most heavily affected and hurt by the use of surveillance technology, especially in immigration enforcement applications. With that being said, immigrants and non-US citizens, U.S. citizens, government agencies, politicians, tech companies, and human advocacy groups all play a role in this. Let’s dive deeper into what each of these roles look like more specifically.
While the general public are all affected, the impact looks different for immigrants and non-US citizens than for U.S. citizens.
Immigrants and Non-U.S. citizens living in the U.S.
For immigrants and non-U.S. citizens thar reside in the U.S., their stake in this is larger than other stakeholders. Why? Because their lives depend so much on whether or not they are targeted by immigration agencies. When targeted by either immigration enforcement or by surveillance technology, immigrants and non-U.S. citizens can have their whole lives uprooted and dismantled. Even if an immigrant has gone through the legal process of immigrating, are they truly safe? The answer should be yes, but Muniz touches on the idea that because surveillance technology does not have physical borders. Migrants must now face checkpoints in their daily lives, which is used to keep migrants reminded of the social construct set up to make them “outsiders”. U.S. citizens often do not feel the same worries that immigrants and non-U.S. citizens do because they don’t face the same challenges.
U.S. Citizens
U.S. citizens, however, can still play a role in helping immigrants and non-U.S. citizens. Because of the privilege they have of stable citizenship, it is important that they stand up when an immigrant’s rights are violated or being taken away. Government agencies are large stakeholders, as well. Prominently because of the role they play in immigration enforcement and the implementation of surveillance technology. Agencies such as the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Department of Homeland Security all work on immigration enforcement in some capacity. These agencies all use these surveillance systems, but also work with large tech companies to ensure these systems are set up.
Tech Companies and Corporations
Tech companies such as Palantir, which was mentioned earlier, and Northrop Grumman. Palantir may be the most well known for its controversial ImmigrationOS software (Hubbard, 2025). Further collaboration can be seen in the $51.6 million contract the government made with Palantir (Nalbandian, 2022). The goal of this contract was for Palantir to create a case management system. Similarly to Palantir, Northrop Grumman signed a $95 million contract with the Department of Homeland Security in 2018 (Nalbandian, 2022). With the ultimate goal of creating a new database that would hold data such as: fingerprints, palm prints, facial image and iris scans, and deported felons and immigration violators. The most notable feature of this system would be its ability to hold 500 million unique identities (Nalbandian 2022). Tech companies need to put immigrants at the forefront of their designs and ensure that protecting them is their main mission. Then and only then, will the companies be ethical.
Politicians & Human Advocacy Groups
Human advocacy groups are also important stakeholders in this conversation because of the work they do to protect such a marginalized community. They are fighting for the protection of immigrants. S.T.O.P is an organization working to stop government use of mass surveillance. They highlight the impact that surveillance has on marginalized communities in the United States, including immigrants. Politicians have a similar role in advocating and speaking up for the immigrant community, all the while implementing key policy in order to protect the rights of immigrants. Politicians are involved in the decision making process and focus on the creation of immigration laws. An example of this can be seen in the effort made to pass the American Data Privacy and Protection Act. The Act was introduced in hopes of protecting consumer data privacy and furthering security, to ultimately limit data collection (Pallone). However, the Act was not passed (Pallone).
Click next to see discussion questions.