Washington, D.C. – The data brokerage firm, LexisNexis, has signed a $16.8 million contract to sell a database of personal information to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). As reported by The Intercept, LexisNexis will provide Homeland Security investigators with access to billions of personal records, including credit history, bankruptcy records, license plate images, and cellular subscriber information.
Cynthia Garcia, National Campaigns Manager for Community Protection of United We Dream, said:
“LexisNexis has a dark history of marketing its access to personal information to law enforcement agencies in order to make it easier for them to locate and arrest those in our communities. Black and brown communities remain disproportionately profiled, targeted, and killed by law enforcement. Databases like the one LexisNexis is selling to ICE have been weaponized to criminalize Black and brown communities, send immigrants through the deportation pipeline and deny our people a pathway to citizenship. In 2018, Homeland Security Investigations —the same office that LexisNexis is now supplying billions of personal records to— raided a meatpacking plant in Tennessee, arresting nearly 100 immigrants.
This multi-million dollar contract is directly abetting our country’s racist and punitive immigration system that is intended to harm, detain, and deport immigrants en masse. It’s time to call out LexisNexis for what is: another lever of the U.S. deportation machine that cruelly wastes millions of dollars to fund the deportation forces of ICE and CBP. LexisNexis, along with the private companies that own and operate ICE detention centers, will continue to profit off the pain and trauma of immigrants until ICE and CBP are defunded and abolished altogether.”
