Alejandra Pablos leans into the camera, and her curly black hair frames her face. “Let’s hear about miscarriages,” she tells viewers watching via Instagram Live. Every Tuesday, Pablos organizes virtual lectures on abortion. Dressed in a cozy gray top, she reminds viewers that they can participate via video to share their own experiences. “I’ll be the first person to share,” Pablos says in a soothing tone as he cups his hands around his face, revealing delicate tattoos. Her nails are a deep brown with pristine tips.
Pablos works as an organizer for the Reproductive Justice Coalition in Phoenix, Arizona. Her Instagram account is filled with memes, videos and TikToks asserting the importance of access to safe and legal abortions. She was born in Mexico but moved to the US with her family as a baby. She is currently undocumented.
“A lot of us don’t have a choice,” Pablos says matter-of-factly, sharing that the last time she was pregnant, she really wanted to have the baby, “but I also knew I was facing deportation and literally a year after having that abortion, I was arrested by ICE.”
Pablos was detained by immigration authorities, known as the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and detained for 43 days at the Eloy Detention Center, a very prison-like facility, in 2018.
Pablos’ situation is, in some ways, unique. As an undocumented immigrant and pro-choice advocate in a state poised to implement an exceptionally strict abortion ban, she uses social media to tell her story. But these aspects of her life also highlight the risks that women in the US may face more broadly if Roe v. Wade is knocked down.
When abortion was formerly criminalized in the United States before 1973, law enforcement lacked the technology and surveillance data that police departments and other authorities can now access. For clues to what a current wave of enforcement might look like, pro-choice advocates and academics point to the ways federal, state, and local officials currently monitor many immigrants, blacks, and BIPOC communities using data from social media like Instagram and Facebook. , street and road surveillance, and other sources.
The issue is especially pressing for low-income black and Latino women because they are more likely to seek an abortion according to the Guttmacher Institute.
But in the wake of a leaked draft Supreme Court opinion on May 2 that proposed overthrowing Roe, those questions have suddenly become even more urgent and broader. If abortion is criminalized, tactics and tools already used by law enforcement and immigration authorities could be adapted to track anyone seeking or even considering abortion, according to advocates and academics who study the issue. A group of senators also called for stricter data privacy rules to protect people seeking abortion, in a letter to Apple and Google.
Pablos recognizes all these intertwined surveillance systems and says that together they weave a web that can be difficult to escape. “The same state that is trying to deport me,” she says, “would also force me to get pregnant, even if I didn’t decide to raise a family.”
Data collection and sharing
Pablos’ personal life was profoundly affected by two areas of government policy: immigration and reproductive rights. Read also : Boot camp to train for high-tech jobs. Arizona has notoriously tough anti-immigration laws.
Arizona also has especially restrictive abortion laws. Earlier this year, the state passed a 15-week abortion ban, with no exceptions for rape or incest. Abortion seekers are also required to receive an ultrasound, regardless of whether it is medically necessary. If Roe is overthrown, abortion will automatically become illegal in the state.
These two aspects fuel her work as an organizer and paint a picture of how data can be collected and shared by authorities.
Pablos’ decade-long struggle with ICE originally began when she was stopped by local police in 2011 and later arrested and convicted of driving under the influence and possessing drug paraphernalia. It’s an example of how local and federal officials collaborate to share data, which can offer a glimpse of what’s to come if Roe is toppled.
For example, Pablos works as an abortion doula who supports pregnant women both emotionally and financially. This includes taking people to clinics for an abortion. In Arizona, seemingly mundane activities such as driving can pose great risks for undocumented individuals who may be deported after a traffic stop. Despite local laws that prevent police from racial profiling drivers or contacting immigration authorities during a routine traffic stop, human rights advocates allege that police are still practicing these practices.
“I give people rides on a daily basis; what will those tours be like now?” says Pablos. “As an undocumented person taking people through [police] checkpoints, even though I know I’m legally allowed to be here right now, that’s really scary.”
The data shared between agencies is extensive, advocates say. “Systems that weren’t talking to each other are communicating a lot more,” says Patrice Lawrence, executive director of the UndocuBlack Network. Federal authorities like ICE have access to a complex network of databases that collect data from various sources, including fingerprint data collected when someone is arrested.
According to the ICE website, these data-sharing programs allow the agency to work with “law enforcement partners on shared responsibility for ensuring the safety of our communities” “using biometrics to identify foreign-born individuals arrested for crimes.” .
Read more: Inside the Effort to Promote Abortion Pills for a Post-Roe America
“We now have evidence of a huge militarized and profitable technological surveillance machine being relayed against black and brown communities,” says Paromita Shah, executive director of Just Futures Law, “is a threat to migrants, and it is also a threat to all of our well-being.”
Such data collection can affect citizens and non-citizens, organizers say, regardless of whether or not people have interacted with the police. The Georgetown Law Privacy and Technology Center, a Washington, D.C. think tank, released a major report on ICE in May. It claims that ICE can access the driver’s license data of 74% of adults. The agency has already used facial recognition technology to search the driver’s license photographs of 32% of US adults, according to the report.
These activities are well-funded – immigration agencies commit millions of dollars to collecting data. For example, Mijente, a Latinx advocacy organization, found that ICE hired a data broker to access license plate databases to track the movement of cars. The value of the contract is US$ 22.8 million. These lucrative contracts allow ICE to track the movement of cars in cities where nearly 70% of adults live, according to the Privacy and Technology Center.
Supporters also argue that ICE will go to extreme lengths to track down undocumented immigrants. The agency identified and detained immigrants based on data collected when they paid a gas, electricity or internet bill, according to a report by Just Futures Law. ICE can access this information through contracts with private data brokers that allow the agency to access the information of more than 218 million utility customers nationwide, according to the Privacy and Technology Center. Just Futures Law estimates these contracts are worth more than $43 million.
Criminal justice organizers warn that this surveillance data also flows in the other direction, from federal authorities to state or local authorities. “The broader information-sharing environment is vast,” says Hamid Khan, organizer of the STOP LAPD Spying Coalition, who describes this phenomenon as the “dataification of our bodies.” Khan also points to fusion centers as important elements of how data sharing happens. Fusion centers are hubs designed to facilitate information sharing between federal, state and local agencies, created after 9/11 and operating quietly since then.
Local surveillance
Although some fear deportation, as Roe v. On the same subject : 6-24-22 Second Annual “Fill the Food Cruiser” July 1 in Kona. Wade hangs in the balance, others fear attracting the attention of local authorities.
At the local level, some police departments rely on technology that analyzes individuals’ social media accounts to supposedly prevent crime. In the past, this technology has flagged individuals as gang members based on their Facebook friends list or who is next to them in a photo. Civil rights groups in Chicago, New York and Minnesota have criticized these databases as clear examples of racial profiling.
Advocates fear similar databases could be created in states where abortion is likely to become illegal if Roe v. Wade is knocked down. “As long as there’s a police department somewhere that wants to have a record of pregnant women and abortions, there’s probably going to be an industry willing to do it or get paid to do it,” says Cynthia Conti-Cook, a technician at the Ford Foundation. colleague and civil rights attorney.
Just Futures Law has documented how ICE has also monitored the social media of immigration activists like Pablos, which concerns advocates like Shah. She says: “People are posting images on social media about being at an abortion protest; perhaps being shown in a clinic. All this social media scraping is an easy fruit for law enforcement and ICE.”
An ICE spokesperson told TIME: “Like other law enforcement agencies, ICE employs various forms of technology to investigate violations of the law, while properly respecting civil liberties and privacy interests.”
Advocates say these ongoing surveillance tactics could be directed against abortion seekers or providers in states that restrict or criminalize abortion. In a new report, the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project predicts that state officials will “turn to the surveillance tools that have become so central to American policing, using technology to examine the most intimate aspects of our lives.”
A history of digital evidence and pregnancy
Police departments have already gone to great lengths to investigate pregnant women by analyzing their digital footprints. See the article : Many Large Business Owners, Others Are Skeptical When Personal Security Begins In Beverly, Mount Greenwood.
Although the leaked Supreme Court memorandum hints at the possible annulment of Roe v. Wade, BIPOC advocates in states that have restricted access to abortion argue that they already live in a post-Roe reality where technological devices and internet activities are used as evidence in court.
Purvi Patel, for example, was convicted of feticide and negligence of an addict for using abortifacient drugs in Granger, Indiana, in 2015. The prosecutor used data from her cell phone and iPad to build a case against her. Evidence presented included text messages to a friend about getting pregnant and buying pills, proof from her email that she bought the pills online, and other online research she conducted. Without that data, the case would have depended solely on the testimony of doctors and experts. Patel was initially given a 20-year sentence, but after significant public outcry and a lengthy legal battle, an appeals court eventually overturned her feticide conviction and she was released from prison.
“They’re using this evidence to imbue intent about a pregnant person’s state of mind,” said Conti-Cook, “because if you ever consider your pregnancy a crisis, they’re not just going to take it literally, but start reading this.”
Conti-Cook also studied the case of Latice Fisher, who was charged with second-degree murder in Mississippi after giving birth to a stillborn baby at home in 2018. Fisher, who is black, had her phone searched by police, who used your internet searches for abortion pills as evidence in your trial. After significant public pressure, the charges against Fisher were dropped and she was released from prison.
Police are increasingly combing cell phones as part of arrests they make for petty crimes such as graffiti or shoplifting, according to a report analyzing police departments across the country by Upturn, a technology-focused policy think tank. . The report shows how the technology police use to search an individual’s phone during an arrest is so advanced that it can map all cell phone activity that took place at a specific location, from phone calls to app usage and photos.
Police departments emphasize the vital role this technology plays in the investigation of serious crimes such as murder and child sexual abuse. There are several cases where technology has provided breakthroughs in the investigation of serial killers. Upturn found that in addition to these cases, the technology is also used for minor crimes such as marijuana possession or vandalism.
An uneven toll
This use of technology is extremely widespread. Upturn estimates that more than 2,000 law enforcement agencies across the country have purchased some form of this technology in all 50 states. The price tag for this technology is uneven, says Conti-Cook, noting that both Patel and Fisher were women of color. “It’s also very fair to assume that the people who will be most criminalized by this evidence or who will come to this evidence will be people of color,” says Conti-Cook.
Black immigrants could face even more layers of risk if abortion is criminalized, says Lawrence. She notes that law enforcement disproportionately targets black individuals; the Stanford Open Policing Project found that black drivers in the US are 20% more likely to be pulled over than white drivers.
Regardless of the risks, Pablos is committed to continuing her work. She has dealt firsthand with the reality of seeking an abortion in a conservative state and dealing with criminal charges while fighting her deportation case. These challenges have taught her that immigration and reproductive justice issues are rooted in struggles for self-determination. “If our autonomy has already been taken from us, then we have nothing left to lose,” Pablos told TIME. For her, the only answer is to keep going despite the danger.
Pablos says, “We’re going to keep doing this work, no matter how bad it gets, because it’s a matter of life and death.”
