Tech billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency task force won approval from the Justice Department to access a sensitive database about immigration cases, The Washington Post reported on Monday evening.
The system in question, known as the Executive Office for Immigration Review's Courts and Appeals System, or ECAS, "is used to store records of immigrants who have interacted with the U.S. immigration system, detailing their name, addresses, previous immigration-court testimony and any history of engagement with law enforcement, among other things," said the report, adding that the Justice Department said “ECAS supports the full life cycle of an immigration case” by maintaining “all records and case-related documents in electronic format.”
High-ranking DOJ officials reportedly granted six "advisors" at DOGE access to this system, and with it, "vast troves of federal data to advance the president’s aggressive deportation efforts."
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Experts sounded the alarm about the intrusion into highly sensitive case information.
National Immigration Law Center senior attorney Lynn Damiano Pearson told the Post, “It really hearkens to what we’re seeing with Social Security, with the IRS, with data that was shared with an expectation of privacy” — a reference to how the IRS is also reportedly being press-ganged into handing over data on certain immigrants — and that the situation has “very concerning impacts for immigrants, even ones who have specifically tried to comply with government policies and do everything right, so to speak.”
Trump's aggressive new plans for mass deportations have triggered outrage and fear around the country as the impacts are already starting to be felt.
A prominent focus has been the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland father who was shipped to the infamous Salvadoran CECOT megaprison despite no criminal record and despite a protective court order ruling he could not be deported to El Salvador. The Trump administration has insisted he is a member of the criminal MS-13 gang based on the unsubstantiated word of a police informant.
Trump has also shipped planeloads of Venezuelans suspected of gang affiliation with little to no due process, and is also targeting foreign college students who participated in the anti-Israel protests a year ago for arrest and removal.