50 signatures reached
To: President Biden, Congress
Tell Congress and President Biden: Ban ICE surveillance of money orders and cash transfers!
ICE should have never been allowed to collect financial records of millions of people who use money orders. We demand that this mass financial data surveillance be banned by an act of Congress or Executive Order.
Why is this important?
Most people think sending money to a friend or family member in need is a personal matter, but ICE disagrees. We just found out that ICE has been collecting personal financial data on millions of people who use money transfer services like Western Union.1
ICE can use this data to try to target immigrants who send money back to their families, and potentially deport them. The federal government should never be in the business of spying on people who are just trying to financially help their friends and family.
Sign the petition: Tell Congress and President Biden to ban ICE surveillance of money orders and cash transfers!
For millions of people in California, Arizona, New Mexico, or Texas, who recently used a money order service, like Western Union, their personal information and the personal information of the person they sent money to likely ended up in a database without them even knowing – a database that is shared with ICE and other law enforcement agencies.
Since 2019, ICE used administrative subpoenas to money order and cash transfer companies like Western Union to collect sender and recipient names and addresses. This essentially criminalizes people for not having bank accounts, and specifically targets immigrant communities of all kinds for the commonplace practice of sending remittances back to family members.
Once Senator Wyden started asking questions about the program, ICE shut it down.2 That’s because ICE has gotten so out of control that they don’t stop to question whether their actions are legal or not – they’re just out to hunt down, detain, and deport as many immigrants as they can.
This has to stop. ICE has consistently proved that they will abuse any amount of power given to them. That’s why Congress and President Biden need to act now to specifically and permanently ban ICE from spying on people’s private financial data.
Sign the petition: Tell Congress and President Biden to ban ICE surveillance of money orders and cash transfers!
Sources:
1. Buzzfeed, “ICE Conducted Sweeping Surveillance Of Money Transfers Sent To And From The US, A Senator Says,” March 8, 2022.
2. Ibid.