BOSTON: A mobile fingerprinting app US immigration agents use to run remote ID checks in the field has become a core tool in President Donald Trump’s deportation crackdown, a pair of immigration rights groups say in a new report based on a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
The 2,500 pages of documents obtained through the 2017 lawsuit show that the app, known as EDDIE, has helped Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents ramp up deportations of migrants not intentionally targeted for removal, the report states. Such people are often detained as “collaterals” picked up in operations aimed at others, the activists say in Monday’s report. They say that field use of the app exacerbates racial profiling in immigrant communities.