The Clay-Gilmore Institute for Philosophy, Technology, and Counterinsurgency
“The production of normalized conditions of direct state violence against targeted people, communities, and geographies—from surveillance and police terror to criminalization, displacement, incarceration, and legally/culturally sanctioned state torture, homicide, and (proto-)genocide—is fundamental to the national project, and is the tacit premise of legibility for generic American notions of freedom, democracy, safety, (civil) rights, and civil society.”[i] — Dylan Rodriguez
In this article, I occasionally use the spelling ‘Amerika’ to detach America from its liberal mythologies, which predicate racialized subjugation and political repression. The tactics of which are essential to how ICE operations embrace the logics of counterinsurgency warfare through racialized threat construction, state terrorism, and intelligence-driven tactics of policing and surveillance, ultimately in service of white supremacist Amerikan notions of progress and protection.
Throughout the history of the United States, white America’s racialized imagination understood “Mexican-ness” to be inextricably tied to notions of “illegality.”[ii] Contemporary political rhetoric taps into this racialized social consciousness through language such as “illegal alien”, leading to the construction of racialized immigrants as threats to American social and economic well-being. Whereas this has been the case for some time, it is only recently that ICE has amplified its tactics of state terrorism in conjunction with the emergence of its AI-based intelligence network of surveillance, reflecting the growth of the Amerikan surveillance state, which embraces these racialized logics of subordination. This emerging initiative relies on unconstitutional forms of political repression and mass surveillance driven by white supremacist notions of Amerikan progress and protection.
Many critics of ICE characterize their recent actions as clear-cut state terrorism. Last year, ICE detained at least 3,800 children, including 20 babies.[iii] Last year, 32 people died in ICE custody. In addition, “nearly 75 percent of the 68,440 people ICE detained last year had no criminal record.”5 I characterize these practices as terroristic tactics producing fear and domestic docility in the service of political ends. ICE’s other tactic of inducing fear through unconstitutional political repression, is quietly being strengthened. Under Trump, ICE’s budget skyrocketed as the agency now has $85 billion at its disposal.[iv] With this, ICE has been developing an expansive intelligence network that reflects a counterinsurgency logic through legally exceptional covert control over information in the service of pacification against political dissidents. This is how it works: ICE’s expanding surveillance apparatus operates on three levels. Data aggregation, AI-driven and technologized tools of analysis, and operationalized tactics of (legal, physical, and psychological) pacification.
Data Aggregation
Through multiple contracts and deals with private corporations, ICE is managing to aggregate massive amounts of data and build a seriously intimidating surveillance web. ICE has multiple technologies that they utilize to identify and threaten activists and civilian patrollers. One woman who was patrolling ICE in Minneapolis was threatened when ICE simply recited her name and home address to her, she said, “Their message was not subtle, right? They were in effect saying, ‘We see you. We can get you whenever we...