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    ICE Extreme Vetting Initiative: A Resource Page

    This resource page is intended to provide journalists, policy-makers, and the public information about the ICE Extreme Vetting Initiative.

    Published: November 16, 2017

    Last Updated: May 24, 2018

    Update: ICE confirmed publicly in May 2018 that the agency is dropping the machine learning aspect of the planned program, though it is not clear whether several of the other elements remain. For more on the implications of ICE’s announcement and the outstanding questions and concerns, see:

    Background on the ICE Extreme Vetting Initiative:

    What is the Extreme Vetting Initiative? 

    • Pres. Trump’s January 2017 “Muslim ban” executive order called for all travelers to the U.S. to be screened to determine if they would be “positively contributing member[s] of society” and “make contributions to the national interest” – and if they intended to commit a crime or terrorist act.
    • The Extreme Vetting Initiative is ICE’s plan to monitor Twitter, Facebook, and the rest of internet to automatically flag people for deportation or visa denial based on the exact criteria from the original Muslim ban. It will function, in effect, as a digital Muslim ban.
    • ICE will force its contractor to flag a minimum of 10,000 people a year for deportation investigations and/or visa denial. ICE wants to award the contract for this system by Sept. 2018.

    What’s Wrong with the Extreme Vetting Initiative?

    • The Extreme Vetting Initiative “is tailor-made for discrimination,” argued The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the NAACP, Color of Change, the Center for Media Justice and 52 other other NGOs in an open letter to DHS. Driven by animus and based on broad, undefined criteria, this tool will let ICE deport or deny admission to whomever it wants.
    • The Extreme Vetting Initiative will chill free speech. ICE will continuously scan “media, blogs, public hearings, conferences, academic websites, [and] social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.” This will scare Americans and foreign nationals into censoring themselves online.
    • The Extreme Vetting Initiative won’t work. According to a letter to DHS signed by 54 of the nation’s leading experts in machine learning and automated decision-making, “no computational methods can provide reliable or objective assessments of the traits that ICE seeks to measure.”

    How Will It Impact African Americans, Latinos, and Muslim Americans?

    • African Americans. Black youth are more likely than white youth to be on Twitter, and use social media for longer periods. Yet natural language processing appears to be less accurate when analyzing common expressions used in the African American community. 

    • Latinos. Millions of Latinos live in “mixed-status” families. Monitoring social media to deport people will sweep up millions of American citizens, a disproportionate number of them Latinos. 

    • Muslim Americans. Muslims are disproportionately targeted for watchlisting. This program draws its criteria, verbatim, from the first Muslim ban. It is clearly targeted at the Muslim community. 

    What Should Be Done About the Extreme Vetting Initiative?

    • Congress should press DHS to end the system. The nation’s leading civil rights and technical leaders agree: This system will be inaccurate and biased. It will hurt real people and families.
    • Congress should expand its oversight into the system. Momentum is building on the Hill to demand answers and ask DHS to shut down this program, and even more attention is needed.

    ICE Documents on the Extreme Vetting Initiative: 

    In July, ICE held two “industry days” for vendors interested in the Extreme Vetting Initiative contract. The following documents are drawn from the Federal Business Opportunities website for the EVI contract.

    Opposition Letters and Statements:

    Press and Commentary on Extreme Vetting & Social Media Monitoring: 

    Additional Resources on Extreme Vetting & Social Media Monitoring:

    Chronology of Social Media Monitoring: 

    Letters to State Department and DHS on Extreme Vetting and Social Media: 

    Coalition Letter Signatories:                                                           

    18 Million Rising

    Access Now

    Advocacy for Principled Action in Government

    American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee

    American Civil Liberties Union

    Amnesty International

    Asian Americans Advancing Justice

    Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law

    Center for Constitutional Rights

    Center for Democracy & Technology

    Center for Media Justice

    The Center for Security, Race, and Rights, Rutgers Law School

    Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law

    Color of Change

    Committee to Protect Journalists

    The Constitution Project

    Council on American-Islamic Relations

    The Concerned Archivists Alliance

    Defending Rights & Dissent

    Demand Progress

    Electronic Frontier Foundation

    Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC)

    Free Press

    Friends Committee on National Legislation

    Government Accountability Project

    Government Information Watch

    Human Rights Watch

    Human Rights Data Analysis Group

    Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota

    Justice Strategies

    The Identity Project

    Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law

    Liberty Coalition

    The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

    Legal Aid Justice Center

    Muslim Advocates

    Muslim Justice League

    Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC)

    NAACP

    NAFSA: Association of International Educators

    National Hispanic Media Coalition

    National Immigration Law Center

    National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild

    National Iranian American Council (NIAC)

    New America’s Open Technology Institute

    Online Policy Group

    OpenTheGovernment

    Open MIC (Open Media and Information Companies Initiative)

    PEN America

    People for the American Way

    Restore the Fourth

    South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT)

    Southern Poverty Law Center

    Services, Immigrant Rights, and Education Network (SIREN)

    Union for Reform Judaism

    Woodhull Freedom Foundation

    Technology Expert Letter Signatories:

    Hal Abelson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

    Ben Adida, Clever

    Blaise Agüera y Arcas, Google / Machine Intelligence

    Solon Barocas, Cornell University

    Steven M. Bellovin, Columbia University

    danah boyd, Microsoft Research / Data & Society

    Elizabeth Bradley, University of Colorado, Boulder / Santa Fe Institute

    Meredith Broussard, New York University

    Emma Brunskill, Stanford University

    Carlos Castillo, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

    Aaron Clauset, University of Colorado, Boulder

    Lorrie Faith Cranor, Carnegie Mellon University

    Kate Crawford, AI Now, New York University / Microsoft Research

    Hal Daumé III, University of Maryland / Microsoft Research

    Fernando Diaz, Spotify

    Peter Eckersley, Electronic Frontier Foundation

    Michael Ekstrand, Boise State University

    David Evans, University of Virginia

    Ed Felten, Princeton University

    Sorelle Friedler, Haverford College

    Timnit Gebru, Microsoft Research

    Joe Hall, Center for Democracy & Technology

    Brent Hecht, Northwestern University

    James Hendler, Rensselaer Polythechnic University

    Subbarao Kambhampati, Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence / Arizona State University

    Joshua A. Kroll, University of California at Berkeley

    Been Kim, Google Brain

    Susan Landau, Tufts University

    Kristian Lum, Human Rights Data Analysis Group

    Sascha Meinrath, X-Lab / Penn State University

    Alan Mislove, Northeastern University

    Margaret Mitchell, Google Research / Machine Intelligence

    Deirdre Mulligan, University of California at Berkeley

    Cristopher Moore, Santa Fe Institute

    Ramez Naam, technologist and author, The Nexus Trilogy

    Cathy O’Neil, mathematician and author, Weapons of Math Destruction

    Jake Porway, DataKind

    Megan Price, Human Rights Data Analysis Group

    Gireeja Ranade, Microsoft Research

    David Robinson, Upturn

    Salvatore Ruggieri, University of Pisa, Italy

    Stuart Russell, University of California at Berkeley

    Bruce Schneier, Harvard Kennedy School

    Cosma Shalizi, Carnegie Mellon University

    Julia Stoyanovich, Drexel University

    Ashkan Soltani, independent researcher and technologist

    Peter Szolovits, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

    Hanna Wallach, Microsoft Research / University of Massachusetts Amherst

    Nicholas Weaver, International Computer Science Institute / University of California at Berkeley

    Meredith Whittaker, AI Now, New York University / Google Open Research

    Christo Wilson, Northeastern University

    Chris Wiggins, Columbia University

    David H. Wolpert, Santa Fe Institute

    Rebecca Wright, Rutgers University