HRC 48 Oral Statement: Interactive dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance

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Transcript:

My name is Mitra Ebadolahi. I am a Senior Staff Attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation in San Diego & Imperial Counties, California.

I welcome and applaud the Special Rapporteur’s report on the racial and xenophobic discrimination inherent in the use of digital technologies in border and immigration enforcement.

San Diego and Imperial Counties are among the many rich, vibrant border communities to be found in the United States. Our diversity and multinationalism is to be celebrated, not surveilled.

Yet government actors continue to seek out new ways to overpolice and oppress our communities, relying on mass surveillance technologies that further marginalize communities of color, immigrants, and indigenous peoples.

As explained in the Special Rapporteur’s report, we are witnessing the rapid expansion of “digital borders,” which consist of a wide array of invasive border surveillance technologies, such as algorithmic databases; digitized identification documents; facial recognition and other biometric databases; and widespread deployment of ground sensors and aerial video surveillance drones.

These technologies are deployed without adequate oversight and further insulate border enforcement agencies from meaningful public accountability for human rights violations.

I urge the Biden Administration and the U.S. Congress to significantly reduce their reliance on invasive surveillance technologies in border and immigration enforcement.

Thank you.

To view the report of the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, please click here.