Former ICE officials clash on agency’s need for increased data access
As the Trump administration pursues its increasingly stringent immigration policy, former officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement disagreed during a Tuesday hearing on the need for agency access to data and how to approach data modernization.
In a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing, witnesses for the Republican majority testified that ICE needs streamlined data-sharing across agencies, access to critical data sources (such as the Department of Motor Vehicles records) and a new data platform.
John Fabbricatore, a former ICE senior executive and field office director, said the agency needs a new data platform that is “agile, robust and equipped with advanced machine learning and cloud-native capabilities. These systems can reveal unseen relationships, identify patterns and provide actionable insights, giving agents the tools to target and apprehend with precision.”
Deborah Fleischaker, a witness for the Democrats who served as a chief of staff at ICE and as the agency’s assistant director for regulatory affairs, said the agency already has access to information-sharing databases like the National Crime Information Center, a variety of gang databases and state DMV records.
“Access to additional data is not the limiting factor in ICE’s immigration enforcement mission; all of its access already provides vast troves of information,” Fleischaker said. “ICE doesn’t need additional data to do its job, but it does need help analyzing, sorting and prioritizing the data to which it already has access.”
Fleischaker noted that Congress is tasked with funding data modernization through the appropriations process, and the funds for this purpose are “cannibalized” by needs like detention or alternatives to detention.
Fabbricatore agreed that the agency requires increased funding for technology deployment, but stated that sanctuary jurisdictions have exacerbated information-accessing challenges by denying access to critical data sources, like at the DMV.
Doug Gilmer, a former Department of Homeland Security and Homeland Security Investigations official, said modernizing ICE’s technology is “useless” if the tech and data it produces remain in silos.
“That remains one of the biggest detriments to law enforcement: the lack of a collaborative data-sharing environment,” Gilmer said. “When technology and data are siloed, are not easily retrievable or accessible, we lose critical time and … information relevant to an investigation.”
Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Va., told FedScoop that he doesn’t believe that ICE has a “dearth” of data.
“Everyone always wants more data, because data is gold,” Subramanyam said. “Certainly, they have a lot of data already, and it’s mostly about using that data wisely to implement their mission.”
Subramanyam’s questioning focused in part on data management talent within the federal government, and whether those individuals are leaving the government or facing termination.
“It will impact immigration, it will impact every part of our government if we are getting rid of the IT, cybersecurity and data experts,” Subramanyam told FedScoop, referring to the Trump administration’s large-scale federal workforce cuts. “How do we expect to provide exemplary services to the American people if we are firing, vilifying and losing — in droves — the very people who can help us do that best?”
