“The New York Senate should utilize a special session to pass other legislation tamping down on policies and practices that are or could be used by ICE — such as the emerging threat of biometric surveillance technology in schools.”
A NYC Council rally in 2018, calling for ICE agents to be ejected from courthouses. (John McCarten/NYC Council)
President Donald Trump’s revocation of a directive barring ICE agents from raiding and surrounding sensitive spaces, like K-12 schools, is paralyzing New York communities with fear– chilling students’ attendance, preventing parents from meeting their kids in the pick-up line, and making deportation a regular occupational hazard for essential staff. It has been a disaster not only for our community health, but also for basic educational pedagogy.
In response, New Yorkers are mobilizing to protect access to safe public education and keep ICE out of schools, coaching students and educators on how to refuse entry to ICE officers. And nationwide, some education advocates are responding to ICE on campus like active shooter lockdowns.
But these community protections can be easily bypassed or squashed. In the news and in our streets, we’ve seen the National Guard intervene to enforce deportations, and we’ve seen state and local law enforcement agencies, like the NYPD, collaborate with ICE.
Right now, New York lawmakers and advocates are taking action against these threats. New York State Senators Jabari Brisport and Julia Salazar have called on the New York State Legislature to reconvene in a special session to pass the New York for All Act—a crucial piece of legislation that would significantly limit collaboration between state and local law enforcement and ICE officials.
But the buck should not stop here. The New York Senate should utilize a special session to pass other legislation tamping down on policies and practices that are or could be used by ICE—such as the emerging threat of biometric surveillance technology in schools. This dystopian technology can become a digital backdoor for ICE agents to raid our schools’ hallways, cafeterias, and classrooms.
Many public and private schools across the country are shelling out tens of thousands of dollars to slimy tech vendors selling AI powered software that processes footage captured by school surveillance cameras and collects the biometric features and movements of students, staff members, and visitors without their consent.
Biometric systems won’t make schools safer. Instead, these technologies turn schools into data collection farms that may function as a backdoor for federal immigration enforcement. Biometric surveillance systems, including facial recognition technology (FRT), expose students—especially Black, Brown, and immigrant youth—to increased risk of law enforcement and ICE encounters.
These systems are prone to algorithmic bias, frequently misidentifying students of color and triggering unnecessary interactions with school security or police. Once a student is flagged by the tech, their personal information can be logged into law enforcement databases—without that student’s consent. From there, fusion centers may share these permanent digital records across agencies, including ICE. ICE can then use that information to pursue dubious warrants and gain access to school grounds, where they may detain students who were never even flagged by the system.
Like the NYPD, school resource officers and administrators may even utilize biometric surveillance in cooperation with ICE—allowing ICE to feed images of individuals they are seeking to deport into the school’s FRT database. Imagine being a non-citizen parent of an American student and not knowing whether coming to your child’s parent-teacher conference will result in your deportation and permanent separation from your child, whether because you attended a protest and became a target of the federal administration, or simply because the facial recognition algorithm misidentified you as a target. How are you supposed to support your child’s education?
The NY For All Act would regulate school resource and NYPD officers’ disclosure of immigration status to ICE; however, it cannot account for the disclosure of status through data breaches. Schools that adopt biometric surveillance systems often outsource the storage of sensitive data—like students’ facial scans and fingerprints—to private vendors, creating serious and long-term cybersecurity risks.
Even when these vendors technically comply with student data privacy laws, they remain prime targets for data breaches. In one major breach in 2019, hackers accessed Suprema’s BioStar 2 platform and exposed 27.8 million records, including fingerprints and facial recognition data. Unlike a password, biometric information can’t be changed once it’s stolen—meaning that a child’s digital identity can be compromised for life.
These stolen biometrics are frequently sold to shady third-party data brokers and can end up in sprawling databases used by law enforcement, including ICE. Thus, when schools install these vulnerable technologies, they don’t just jeopardize student privacy; they potentially expose children to lifelong surveillance, law enforcement scrutiny, and immigration enforcement far beyond the classroom.
Currently, New York schools are allowed to use most forms of biometric surveillance on students, parents, and other visitors. While facial recognition is currently forbidden by a regulation, a new education commissioner could reinstate facial recognition in schools overnight.
If a special session is called, lawmakers could have the chance to demonstrate their commitment to fostering inclusive, safe educational environments and keep our schools free of dystopian surveillance tech that disproportionately harms vulnerable populations. A bill currently advancing through New York’s Assembly and Senate would not only secure the existing regulatory ban on FRT in schools, it would also expand the ban to other types of biometric surveillance tech currently installed in several New York schools.
In addition to passing the NY For All Act, this is a critical step towards safeguarding educational access for all students, regardless of immigration status. And with Trump-allied politicians like New York Mayor Eric Adams touting anti-immigration policies and swelling citywide spending on surveillance tech, it is our moral imperative as New Yorkers to push our state’s leaders to swiftly pass these and other bills dismantling ICE’s enforcement capabilities.
Sarah Roth is a legal intern at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.) and rising 2L at Northeastern University School of Law.
The post Opinion: Albany Can’t Wait Until January To Fight Trump and ICE appeared first on City Limits.
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