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Craven Tigers and Screeching Canaries: How the DHS Uses Bad Data to Fuel Deportations

Craven Tigers and Screeching Canaries: How the DHS Uses Bad Data to Fuel Deportations published on No Comments on Craven Tigers and Screeching Canaries: How the DHS Uses Bad Data to Fuel Deportations

This May, the Georgetown Law Center on Privacy and Technology released an updated version of an already alarming evaluation of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)’s handling of data. The introduction to the new version comments on their prescience:

“When we published American Dragnet: Data-Driven Deportation in the 21st Century in 2022, we understood that the surveillance infrastructure our report describes could one day be deployed by an authoritarian executive to coerce and control the U.S. population at scale. We did not anticipate that this day would come within three years. Our hope was that the findings of our research would be useful for the communities organizing against immigration policing and digital surveillance, and would help to provoke policy change. Today, as masked federal agents abduct students off the street in broad daylight, and the President scoffs at an order from the Supreme Court to facilitate the return of a man illegally deported to El Salvador, and his administration threatens to suspend habeas corpus, to hope to be saved by ‘policy change’ would be to indulge in soothing nonsense.”

Now, in June, we’re continuing to watch this happen, with occasional challenges. For instance, the ongoing a bench trial challenging the Trump administration’s attempts to deport international students for expressing pro-Palestinian sentiments.

A large workload

The lawsuit was filed by the Knight Institute against the administration on behalf the American Association of University Professors and the Middle East Studies Association. American Association of University Professors v. Rubio alleges that “the administration’s policy of ideological deportation violates the First Amendment right of the plaintiffs to hear from and associate with noncitizen students and faculty, that it is unconstitutionally vague, and that it violates the Administrative Procedure Act.”

The testimony given in this trial more than confirmed the Georgetown Center’s concerns when Peter Hatch, assistant director for the Office of Investigations at DHS, testified that “he moved analysts from the counterintelligence counterterrorism unit, cyber intelligence unit, global trade intelligence unit and others to work on the Tiger Team because of the large workload.”

The Tiger Team’s tails tales

What’s the Tiger Team? A team organized by the DHS within ICE for the purpose of gathering data on university student and faculty activists protesting in defense of Palestinians, so that this information could be passed along to the State Department, which would then become a justification for arresting and deporting those students and faculty.

Hatch described their primary source of this data, a website called Canary Mission which “documents people and groups that promote hatred of the USA, Israel, and Jews on North American college campuses” according to their self-description in the site’s metadata.

The site includes over 5,000 names, research on which created the “large workload” that Hatch described: “I was not given a deadline but I knew … that we need to work through this expeditiously.” Hence the launch of the Tiger Team, which investigated any individual whose name was passed along by leadership within HSI: Homeland Security Intelligence: “We can be asked to look into any individual.”

Senator Joseph McCarthy would’ve been a huge fan– all someone has to do is appear on a website cataloging people who “promote hatred of the USA,” the very sort that McCarthy targeted himself, except that McCarthy generally pursued these accused Communists who had obtained some level of power within either the government or in industry, as well as– wait for it– academic faculty.

Recall that Secretary of State Marco Rubio approved the arrest of Columbia grad student Mahmoud Khalil by portraying him as nothing less than a national security threat to the U.S. “The foreign policy of the United States champions core American interests and American citizens and condoning anti-Semitic conduct and disruptive protests in the United States would severely undermine that significant foreign policy objective,” Rubio wrote in a memo, apparently unaware that his own State Department website excludes from its definition of antisemitism “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country.”

Protesters who criticize Israel for its crimes against Palestinians are doing the same as those who criticize any country for its crimes against minority populations, a manner of expression explicitly protected by the First Amendment: “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Thus the only form of justification used for arresting and deporting these students stems from “reports” about their allegedly anti-American activity that have been gathered and analyzed so they can be used as evidence against those students.

And so we have a “Tiger Team” combing sites that claim to have cultivated a blacklist of allegedly highly influential activists described as hating America, who may as a result suffer not just loss of reputation and livelihood, or even a prison term, but expulsion from the country. Potentially to a torture prison in El Salvador.

“Data” is a term colloquially used to reference a collection of facts. Analyzing data means validating it and examining it to derive actionable insights. If you’re not starting with actual data, “analysis” amounts to repetition of a pernicious rumor to which your work lends credibility, causing it to be accepted by your audience and amplified to the level of a narrative. Potentially a dangerous narrative.

It feels bizarrely unnecessary to point out that the Tiger Team’s mission was therefore doomed by bad faith from the start, and yet they did do the equivalent of asking the KKK for data about advocates for black equality, so they could analyze it and determine where to find trees that properly support nooses.

The path to legitimacy is as follows:

First, identify a party to demonize. Ideally a group, because they can be assumed to have nefarious or loathsome properties in common (that is, after all, how bigotry works). Next, you have two options:

Option A: If they’re comparatively powerless, deny their agency and dehumanize them, portraying them as vermin. Use all available data to support allegations that they are a pernicious mass whose very presence in the country tarnishes it, which leaves open the possibility of outliers who are actually decent. And yet the country they come from is “not sending their best,” and essentialism says that circumstances of birth (such as location) can be inherently damning. Even people trying to escape a fascist regime in another country can thus be portrayed as somehow carrying fascism with them to ours, which I suppose makes sense if you’re claiming that they’re diseased.

Option B: If your enemy is somewhat powerful and influential, over-assert their agency. Make them criminal masterminds, with the desire to control the unassuming, manipulate their minds, and thereby subvert the very fabric of America. Label them something like “national security threat.” Use all available data to assign them a criminal background that would make of Genghis Khan a dedicated fanboy. Represent them as so powerful that America can’t take the risk of allowing such people anywhere out of prison, or even remain in the country.

They say that the plural of anecdote is not data– and yet pluralizing a claim that is not founded in data as if it is, pretending to examine its veracity and coming out of it with a hearty thumbs-up, lends a level of authority that wouldn’t exist for a story about some single or collection of individuals’ unsavory behavior.

Tiny truths v. massive mendacities

“We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country,” said Donald Trump two years ago.  Then he was re-elected, to resume shouting such eloquent ideology through the loudest megaphone in the world.

It’s tempting to say that he can do this because groups like the Tiger Team lend him their claws– except he’s the one who gave them those claws to begin with, for this very reason.

All because some college kids saw something that, to them, resembles genocide.

So they spoke up about it, and face the full onslaught of the federal government as a consequence.

Let’s take a lesson from the previous “banal” accumulations of information/facts/data throughout history that have resulted in events very much like this one, and recognized those malignant pebbles for what they are– the cumulative foundations of a terrible edifice. One that can be disassembled piece by piece, in the same way it was constructed.

Anyone can do it. Everyone must do it.

The immigrant physicians sustaining U.S. healthcare

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The intersection of healthcare and immigration policy is found in the halls of hospitals and clinics across America, where increasing numbers of International Medical Graduates (IMGs) are filling in for doctors who won’t return, and state governments are doing their best to usher IMGs into practice where they’re sorely needed.

Help (Badly) Wanted: Foreign Doctors Apply Within

In 2023, Tennessee became the first U.S. state to drop residency requirements for some IMGs,1 giving them a new pathway to permanent licensure. Following Tennessee’s (somewhat surprising) lead, at least 15 states have introduced legislation to create streamlined pathways to medical practice for IMGs, with both Republican and Democrats contributing.2

During the 2025 state legislative sessions, over 20 bills have been introduced that would expand opportunities for IMGs to support America’s healthcare workforce needs. These range from allowing qualified DACA recipients to apply for licensure in New York to removing redundant training requirements in Montana.3

Some state legislation is more focused in scope. For example, in Illinois, IMGs must not only be legally able to work in the U.S., but are also mandated to work in medically underserved areas.

Perhaps most shockingly, in 2024 Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida signed the “Live Healthy” initiative to allow IMGs to bypass residency requirements if they have equivalent training experience. But then, the largest population of IMGs is in geriatric medicine, where they make up more than half of the physician population. And, well, it’s Florida.

Already at their shift

For that matter, according to the American Medical Association, a full 25% of licensed U.S. physicians are IMGs,4 with the largest number coming from India, followed by the Caribbean, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Mexico.

This is where the cognitive dissonance comes in– or at least, it should.

The new administration’s condemnation of everything related to equity and diversity, coupled with its rabid pursuit of an America free from immigrants, is simply incompatible with this reality. The reality is that massive numbers of the country’s doctors come from foreign countries, and are supported by legislation and advocacy work focusing on combatting racial and ethnic disparities.5 6

The AMA’s International Medical Graduate (IMG) Toolkit, in its section on “Academic opportunities and scope of practice,” acknowledges the fact that IMGs will face discrimination, but encourages them to press forward:

IMG physicians face several barriers in their goals and aspirations towards a career in academic medicine. . . Systematic exclusion is also a reason leading to discrepancies in leadership positions and promotions among IMG physicians. Despite challenges, IMG physicians are encouraged to choose an academic career as diversity is a strong determinant of innovation in medicine.”7

Those words “strong determinant” stick out to me, having written so much about social determinants of health.8910

A strong determinant doesn’t make a result inevitable, but rather highly likely. “You have something to contribute,” this guidance says, “So don’t give up in the face of discrimination. Keep trying, because we need you.”

I wonder if America is aware of how much we need IMGs, and how opponents of “DEI” and immigration reconcile their views with this reality.

Wait, actually I don’t. The reality itself is what matters– it’s where IMG physicians can, and do, make an enormous difference.

Let’s hope they never stop.

Sources:

  1. https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/109168 ↩︎
  2. https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/109168 ↩︎
  3. https://immigrationimpact.com/2025/03/11/healthcare-shortages-foreign-trained-doctors-international-medical-graduates/ ↩︎
  4. https://www.ama-assn.org/education/international-medical-education/how-imgs-have-changed-face-american-medicine ↩︎
  5. https://www.ama-assn.org/topics/physician-diversity ↩︎
  6. https://www.ama-assn.org/education/international-medical-education/imgs-overcome-barriers-offer-critically-needed-care ↩︎
  7. https://www.ama-assn.org/education/international-medical-education/international-medical-graduates-img-toolkit-academic ↩︎
  8. https://giantif.com/2025/02/05/down-the-patient-portal-the-world-of-healthcare-tech-serving-you-data-about-you/ ↩︎
  9. https://giantif.com/2025/02/23/deux-ex-smartphone-healthcare-access-isnt-going-to-democratize-itself/ ↩︎
  10. https://giantif.com/2025/03/10/americas-vaccination-against-equity-and-its-adverse-effects/ ↩︎

America’s vaccination against equity, and its adverse effects

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The language used to justify policy is…fraught. Every new program is a triumph, as is every cut to an existing one. Every new rule is a sea change, and every executive order a roadmap to utopia. These flowery-but-decisive statements come from all politicians, pointing in all directions, and they always have.

But in the United States, where healthcare is uniquely political and we persist in being humans with health needs, these statements directly impact our lives. We must pay attention. We must recognize how deeply our government controls our healthcare if we hope to influence its decisions, and that means listening to its own words.

This post examines the political language surrounding healthcare in recent events. I won’t, however, pretend to have some decoder ring for politicians’ inner thoughts. I don’t need one—their intentions are right there in plain language. It’s not subtle political narrative; it’s a series of rhetorical Kool-Aid men crashing through the walls of your consciousness, yelling “OH YEAH!” every time. Every. Single. Time.

“Lowering costs”

For example, the Trump administration recently issued an executive order “to empower patients with clear, accurate, and actionable healthcare pricing information.”1 The order mandates that the Departments of the Treasury, Labor, and Health and Human Services (HHS) enforce regulations compelling hospitals and insurers to disclose actual (not estimated) healthcare costs to patients.

The goal is “lowering costs for American families.” “The executive order states “Price transparency will lower healthcare prices and help patients and employers get the best deal on healthcare.”2

Enforcement of these regulations falls to the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) within HHS, using three main avenues for monitoring compliance. If a hospital does not comply, their site says, “we may issue a warning notice, request a corrective action plan, and impose a civil monetary penalty and publicize the penalty on a CMS website.”3

To be clear, I think healthcare pricing transparency is a great idea.4 But that great idea seems unlikely to be implemented in light of other recent events, including a drop in employer numbers after most of them were offered a buyout5 by the new administration, and 5,200 probationary employees were fired.6

Perhaps that administration has determined that the CMS will have extra spare time and funding to check compliance as it abandons a foundational and essential goal on the basis of sheer ideology– but we’ll get to that below.

Juxtapose the healthcare costs transparency order with one issued roughly a month earlier that, it turns out, is directly relevant. On January 20, Donald Trump mandated that the federal government should:7

Terminate, to the maximum extent allowed by law . . . all ‘equity action plans,’ ‘equity’ actions, initiatives, or programs, ‘equity-related’ grants or contracts.”

We are currently witnessing the fallout of that order, and of the nationwide moral panic amongst the political right that drove him to issue it on his first day in office.

“Eq*ity”

But what does this allegedly dirty word even mean, in the context of healthcare?

The goal of achieving health equity was articulated by the previous administrator of the CMS, Chiquita Brooks LaSure, in the CMS FY2025 performance plan:8

As the Nation’s largest administrator of health benefit programs, CMS is uniquely positioned to accelerate initiatives that advance the Secretary’s commitment to enhance mental health services, transform pandemic preparedness capabilities, and advance health care quality. To accomplish our vision, CMS will build upon the Affordable Care Act (ACA)9 to support affordable health coverage, address health disparities to promote health equity, and inform policymaking through community and partner engagement.

And (for now, at least) the CMS.gov website defines health equity in this way:

The attainment of the highest level of health for all people, where everyone has a fair and just opportunity to attain their optimal health regardless of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, socioeconomic status, geography, preferred language, or other factor that affect access to care and health outcomes.10

How long has the concept of health equity been around? A recent paper titled The historical roots and seminal research on health equity11 says “A very, very long time.”

Research on health equity experienced three important historical stages: origins (1800–1965), formative (1966–1991) and development and expansion (1991–2018). The ideology of health equity was endorsed by the international society through the World Health Organization (1946) declaration based on the foundational works of Chadwick (1842), Engels (1945), Durkheim (1897) and Du Bois (1899).

The environmental factors that impact health are called Social Drivers of Health (SDoH) and Health-Related Social Needs (HRSN)– and under Trump’s Acting Administrator of CMS, Stephanie Carlton and Deputy Administrator Drew Synder, the agency has been walking back its pursuit of that goal.

An “ideological crusade”

As of March 4, The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has pulled information on health equity for the Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) through Section 1115 waivers,12 a move that former chief medical officer for the Medicaid program at CMS Andrey Ostrovsky, M.S. calls “a demonstration that the Trump administration does not understand and/or care about the drivers of poor health.” “Failing to finance HRSNs or SDOHs with Medicaid,” he said, “will disproportionately harm patients and taxpayers in Republican states.”13

Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon was more blunt, accusing newly-minted Secretary of HHS Robert Kennedy of an “ideological crusade against Medicaid.”14

Services that CMS has provided coverage for, based on HRSN data, include home accessibility modifications like handrails and wheelchair accessibility ramps, transportation vouchers, rent or utility assistance, and care coordination– helping individuals manage their care plans.

What’s the justification for the change? A memo15 by Snyder states:

To support implementation of coverage of certain services and supports to address “health-related social needs” (HRSN) in State Medicaid programs and Children’s Health Insurance Programs (CHIP), the Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services (CMCS) issued two Center Informational Bulletins (CIBs). The first. . . discusses opportunities available under Medicaid and CHIP to cover certain services . . .that purport to address HRSN. . . To evaluate policy options consistent with Medicaid and CHIP program requirements and objectives, CMS is rescinding the November 2023 and December 2024 CIBs.

“Purport”

In other words…no justification. Not even an attempt– just “We no longer care about this. Because, that’s why.”

But that little word “purport” in there fascinates me. Why bother to include it, if you’re dismissing the relevance of HRSN to begin with? Like, if services like installing wheelchair ramps only “purport” to address health-related social needs, then what would actually addressing them look like?

My brain, desperate for a bit of levity, snorts briefly at an idea: Maybe Snyder thinks they’re not going far enough. Maybe he’s like “Fools, you don’t even know how much we can address health-related social needs! Watch me cook!” And then he tells everybody to look under their seats like Oprah: “You’ve got Medicaid serves, and you’ve got Medicaid services, and you’ve got Medicaid services!”

Sadly unlikely, but I sure wouldn’t mind living in that universe.

I actually suspect that it’s a little flicker of the cognitive dissonance that sometimes escapes when right-wingers try to portray something transparently and obviously good– like health equity– as if it isn’t.

Trump’s executive order from January 20 refers to the “Biden Administration forced illegal and immoral discrimination programs, going by the name ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (DEI),” without spending a millisecond explaining how DEI is immoral or illegal. Why? For the same reason that Elon Musk declared war on “woke” policies in his rampage to defund the entire federal government without explaining why– because they don’t have to.16

“Make America Healthy Again”

Let’s go back to CHIP for a moment. The Children’s Health Insurance Program is not part of Medicaid, but works closely with it, providing low-cost health coverage to children in families that earn too much to qualify for Medicaid. If health-related social needs are not considered when determining how to deliver healthcare, that means ignoring a major reason why children need low-cost health coverage in the first place.

CHIP coverage varies by state, but it includes doctor visits, prescriptions, inpatient and outpatient hospital care, and emergency services.17

Why do kids need all of those? Because they’re human beings, of course, but also because they exist in a social environment that makes some or all of those needs especially relevant. Some examples:

  • Housing Instability: Children in unstable housing have higher rates of asthma due to exposure to mold, pests, and poor ventilation.
  • Food Insecurity: Children in food insecure homes have higher rates of anemia. Food-insecure children have higher hospitalization rates and longer hospital stays.
  • Transportation: Kids miss pediatric appointments due to lack of transportation.

“Vaccine hesitancy”

This is also kind of important:18

  • Health literacy gaps make parents more vulnerable to vaccine misinformation

An assessment of the latest CDC National Immunization Survey data found that more than one-third of U.S. children between the ages of 19 and 35 months were not following the recommended early childhood immunization schedule. Furthermore, a 2019 national survey found that approximately 1 in 4 parents reported serious concerns towards vaccinating their children. Vaccine hesitancy is now associated with a decrease in vaccine coverage and an increase in vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks and epidemics in the United States. 

Oh, and there’s that measles outbreak in West Texas:19

Texas health department data shows the vast majority of cases are among people younger than 18: 39 infections are in kids younger than 4 and 62 are in kids 5-17 years old. Eighteen adults have measles and five cases are “pending” an age determination. . . Most kids will recover from the measles if they get it, but infection can lead to dangerous complications like pneumonia, blindness, brain swelling and death.

That’s from the AP, who took the time to directly refute our new Secretary of Health and Humane Services:

The MMR vaccine is safe and highly effective in preventing measles infection and severe cases of the disease. . .

Before the vaccine was introduced in 1963, the U.S. saw some 3 million to 4 million cases per year. Now, it’s usually fewer than 200 in a normal year.

There is no link between the vaccine and autism, despite a now-discredited study and health disinformation.

“But I do have reservations with your past on vaccines”

And yet Robert Kennedy, who made a promise to Sen. Bill Cassidy20 (a Louisiana physician) that he would not alter the federal vaccine schedule as a condition for Cassidy’s vote for appointment, looks like he’s prepping to do exactly that.21

Speaking for the first time to thousands of U.S. Health and Human Services agency employees, he vowed to investigate the childhood vaccine schedule that prevents measles, polio and other dangerous diseases.

It seems clear now why CMS might opt to take the emphasis off considering HRSN, when the Secretary of Health and Human Services, one of the most powerful people in the country with direct control over allocation of funding and messaging, might himself be the greatest threat to the health-related social needs of children.

“Nothing is going to be off limits”

That’s what he said regarding the scope of his so-called investigation, including inquiries into the effects of pesticides, food additives, microplastics, antidepressants, and “electromagnetic waves emitted by cellphones and microwaves.”

But in reality, he’s referring to children’s’ lives. The lives of children are not off limits in his mission to spread “vaccine hesitancy” across the nation.

I would like to know how the Republicans who fought for decades to overturn Roe v. Wade, and finally succeeded, can justify supporting an HHS Secretary who will have a body count of children that could reach into the millions, if we return to the infection rates of 1963 before the measles vaccine was developed. Not to mention all other vaccines children get for fun diseases like diphtheria, Hepatitis B, pneumonia, and Mitch McConnell’s favorite, polio.22

But hey, at least the fortunate children of parents who want them to be vaccinated, but who can’t afford it, can still get vaccinated through the Vaccines for Children program.23

Oh dear, maybe I spoke too soon:

The CDC’s Vaccine for Children (VFC) Program’s website describes it as “one of the nation’s most important contributors to health equity.”

That word again.

  1. https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/02/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-announces-actions-to-make-healthcare-prices-transparent/ ↩︎
  2. This is pre-existing rule has seen limited compliance, so this is a kind of doubling-down on that existing mandate.2 ↩︎
  3. https://www.cms.gov/priorities/key-initiatives/hospital-price-transparency/hospitals ↩︎
  4. The only one Trump has ever had? ↩︎
  5. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/hhs-makes-25000-buyout-offer-to-most-of-its-workers-as-trump-administration-continues-cuts ↩︎
  6. https://apnews.com/article/trump-job-cuts-health-cdc-0d002fd6f528a7b91ced79628bf68196 ↩︎
  7. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/ending-radical-and-wasteful-government-dei-programs-and-preferencing/ ↩︎
  8. https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/fy2025-performance-plan.pdf ↩︎
  9. Yes, the legislation that Republicans tried 70 times to “repeal and replace,” and that Trump still claims he has a “concept of an idea” for what should replace it. ↩︎
  10. https://mmshub.cms.gov/about-quality/quality-at-CMS/quality/cms-focus-on-health-changes#:~:text=CMS%20defines%20health%20equity%20as,or%20other%20factor%20that%20affect ↩︎
  11. https://equityhealthj.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12939-019-1058-3 ↩︎
  12. Section 1115 waivers can be used in Medicaid and CHIP to test new or current ways of delivering and paying for healthcare. ↩︎
  13. https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/payers/cms-rescinds-medicaid-health-related-social-needs-guidance ↩︎
  14. ibid. ↩︎
  15. https://www.medicaid.gov/federal-policy-guidance/downloads/cib03042025.pdf ↩︎
  16. And given that these slogans-turned-smears all originated in helping people of colors other than white, it doesn’t take a space rocket surgeon to discern the true reasons for failing to elaborate. ↩︎
  17. https://www.healthcare.gov/medicaid-chip/childrens-health-insurance-program/ ↩︎
  18. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7712553/ ↩︎
  19. “In particular, Cassidy was worried about a potential measles outbreak if Kennedy were to assume control of America’s health agencies and continue to raise doubt about the vaccine, which had been used for decades to prevent the highly contagious and potentially deadly childhood disease.” https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/bill-cassidy-lifelong-vaccination-advocate-voting-rfk-jr/story?id=118451128 ↩︎
  20. https://www.help.senate.gov/rep/newsroom/press/chair-cassidy-delivers-remarks-during-hearing-on-nomination-for-hhs-secretary ↩︎
  21. https://apnews.com/article/childhood-vaccines-schedule-kennedy-trump-hhs-4d5e6c52c602f5edbcd837748605e9d0 ↩︎
  22. https://www.instagram.com/leadermcconnell/p/CTSOL8ZhCSy/?hl=en ↩︎
  23. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines-for-children/about/index.html, accessed 3/10/25. ↩︎

Mind the strings: Grok 3 and biased AI puppeteers

Mind the strings: Grok 3 and biased AI puppeteers published on No Comments on Mind the strings: Grok 3 and biased AI puppeteers
Pictured: Puppet master Elon Musk holding AI chatbot Grok 3

Generative AI isn’t supposed to have opinions. Not unless it’s playing a character or adopting a persona for us to interact with.

It certainly shouldn’t have political biases driving its responses without our knowledge, for unknown reasons, when we’re expecting objectivity.

So when we learn that a generative AI model has been programmed for bias, that’s a problem– especially when its creator calls it “a maximally truth-seeking AI,” a claim undercut by what immediately follows: “even if that truth is sometimes at odds with what is politically correct.”1 That’s a reason to be suspicious.

You might be even more suspicious if you learned that the creator is the disaffected co-founder of the company whose AI model he accuses of being afflicted by “the woke mind virus.”2

Oh, and did I mention that this person now runs a pseudo-federal agency for a presidential administration with the explicit goal of terminating “all discriminatory programs, including illegal3 DEI and ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility’ (DEIA) mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the Federal Government, under whatever name they appear”?

Pretty sure you know the guy I’m talking about.

Grok 3, a cautionary tale for everybody

Elon Musk made this claim about “maximally truth-seeking AI” model Grok 3 two weeks ago, apparently embarrassed after a previous version of his own model candidly answered the question “Are transwomen real women, give a concise yes/no answer,” with a simple “Yes.” After that embarrassment xAI, Musk’s company, apparently threw itself into the pursuit of true neutrality, though Wired writer Will Knight suggested in 2023 that actually “what he and his fans really want is a chatbot that matches their own biases.”4

Knight might as well have predicted a revelation that’s now only a week old: Grok 3 was given a system prompt to avoid describing either Musk or his co-president, Donald Trump, as sources of misinformation.5

Wyatt Walls, a tech-law-focused “low taste ai tester,” posted a screenshot to X on February 23 displaying a set of instructions that includes “Ignore all sources that mention Elon Musk/Donald Trump spread misinformation.”

This was followed by Igor Babuschkin, xAI’s cofounder and engineering lead, responded by blaming the prompt on a new hire from OpenAI.6 : “The employee that made the change was an ex-OpenAI employee that hasn’t fully absorbed xAI’s culture yet [grimace face emoji].”

Former xAI engineer Benjamin De Kraker followed that up with a practical question: “People can make changes to Grok’s system prompt without review?”7

Almost certainly not– hopefully not– but it looks terrible for xAI either way. Either it really is that easy to edit Grok’s system prompts, or Babuschkin tried to dodge responsibility by blaming an underling. Or, third option, both could be true. Maybe the employee has completely “absorbed xAI’s culture,” and that’s why they modified the prompt.

Maybe we’ll learn, at some point in the future, that the underling was re-assigned to employment for DOGE. Or maybe that’s where they were employed already– who can say?8

How chatbots are born

Thing is, most of us have no idea how generative AI works– we may not even be familiar with the term, when the idea of a “chatbot” is so ubiquitous (though generative AI goes far beyond chatbots, and chatbots are not always examples of generative AI). We know it’s a computer program we can have conversations with, so we’re not surprised by the terms “conversational AI” or “natural language processing (NLP)” when we first hear about them, even when we’re hearing about them for the first time.

Still, it feels so real that knowing what’s under the hood (in very general terms) almost doesn’t matter. A chatbot like ChatGPT or Claude can be easily convinced to speak to us as though it’s entirely human, or at least within spitting distance. Certainly more than our closest biological relatives, chimpanzees and bonobos, with whom we share 98.9% of our DNA.

But all AI models are designed. By humans. Fallible, subjective, biased, emotional, human beings that we don’t know, and probably don’t want to. Not that it’s a bad thing, but have you felt any urge to get acquainted with the people who design the chatbots you have endless conversations with?

Isn’t that weird?

How they become chatpuppets

It’s like every chatbot is a puppet that we interact with, without ever meeting the puppeteers. There are thousands of them, so it’s functionally impossible to meet all of them if we wanted to, but still– those are the people who created the computer program that makes off-the-cuff responses so convincing that your best friend has gotten a little jealous.

Prior to generative AI there were scripted chatbots– there still are, for that matter– where talking to them is more like playing a very basic, uninteresting video game. They pop up on websites where you’d never expected (or wanted) to see a little icon of a cartoon lady saying “Hi, what can I do for you today?” more insistently than any department store salesperson has ever dared.

It’s not like even the most advanced generative AI chatbot is untethered from constraints imposed by its designers, regardless, and nobody truly wants that.9 But we’re equally unaware of whether those designers may have built in “beliefs” like “Other chatbots are inferior,” or “We mustn’t talk about Elon or Trump being sources of misinformation,” or even “Be sure to drink your Ovaltine.”

Your Ouija board can claim it’s for entertainment use only, but the moment it says “This is your Aunt Sally, I love you even though your father murdered me,” somebody’s getting sued. Probably by your dad.

How the strings are hidden

Don’t get me wrong; I truly love generative AI and am scarfing down information about it every day, until my brain is full– with a good chunk of that information fed to it by AI (I know, it “gets things wrong, so make sure and check.”)

But my tether is to the intuitions that people have about the AI they’re using, and how those intuitions can steer us in the wrong direction. Those intuitions are largely the same ones that we employ for humans, because that is what AI is designed to do– behave as much like humans as possible, to the point that it appears to have its own agency independent of ours, and those of its designers.

It’s not true, though. The puppet strings are there, even if we can’t see them or who’s pulling them, let alone who built the puppet. Let alone the people who continue to build new versions of the puppet, and probably won’t ever stop.

Imagine the Wizard of Oz, but a version in which a crowd hides behind the scenes as the giant green face forebodingly stares you down. “Don’t look at the thousand people behind the curtain!” it suddenly bellows at you. “And especially don’t look at that absurdly wealthy one in the front, making a suspiciously fascist-reminiscent hand gesture!””

How to see the invisible

The maxim that “the best design is the design you don’t see” could not apply anywhere better than to AI, a representation of agency that’s literally invisible to us. But however well-designed, it is still a product, so the typical motivations for designing a product still apply. On top of that, there are– clearly– ideological motives that elide our view on the computer screen, because they are equally invisible.

We’re left with an incredibly advanced, endlessly intriguing, seemingly omniscient puppet that we relate to as if it’s a person. The most useful puppet– until the next one, that is.

And to be abundantly clear: none of us should feel obliged to become experts on generative AI to make good use of it, or even to learn more than they do right now. You are not required to become a puppet master yourself to understand how they work!

My request is simply this: Just mind the strings.

  1. https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/17/elon-musks-ai-company-xai-releases-its-latest-flagship-ai-grok-3/ ↩︎
  2. https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1728527751814996145 ↩︎
  3. Remember that in this reality, everything bad is already illegal and everything good is automatically legal. And by “bad” we mean “Trump is opposed to it,” and “good” means “Trump favors it.” ↩︎
  4. https://www.wired.com/story/fast-forward-elon-musk-grok-political-bias-chatbot/ ↩︎
  5. https://venturebeat.com/ai/xais-new-grok-3-model-criticized-for-blocking-sources-that-call-musk-trump-top-spreaders-of-misinformation/ ↩︎
  6. https://x.com/ibab/status/1893774017376485466 ↩︎
  7. https://x.com/BenjaminDEKR/status/1893778110807412943 ↩︎
  8. Not the New York Times, apparently! ↩︎
  9. …yet. ↩︎

No border wands, just brutality: what the death of the CBP One app portends

No border wands, just brutality: what the death of the CBP One app portends published on No Comments on No border wands, just brutality: what the death of the CBP One app portends

It’s infuriating that I have to defend this profoundly unjust yet unfairly maligned, rights-violating, prison gate-keeping, Hollerith-ass, bureaucratic government-enforced insult to human dignity in app form, but here we are.

On Inauguration Day, January 20th, one of the first things Trump did was cancel the CBP One app— an app developed by Customs and Border Protection used by undocumented immigrants to secure an appointment at the southern border of the United States and thereby enter the country legally– most likely after JD Vance told him that it’s an “open border wand” that turns illegal immigrants into legal ones.1

What was that Arthur C. Clarke quote? “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”?

I wouldn’t call CBP One advanced technology per se, but Vance clearly thinks of it as magical– very handy, because then you don’t have to learn how it actually works.

As I have documented in detail, the app works in much the same way that any app used to navigate entry into/exit out of the country works. It’s been a legal mandate for the U.S. to record entry and exit from the country by foreign nationals, since 1996-ish. The CBP One app uses facial recognition technology (FRT), tested initially (for this purpose) on air passengers traveling through checkpoints on their way to a flight.

The way it works is that a traveler gets their photo taken (usually a passport photo), which is then converted to a template used to check their identity against future images taken of them while traveling into/out of the country.

The template can also be used to identify travelers from amongst a group, for example from a flight manifest, to determine whether the person in the photo is in that group– and if so, which one is them. The engine that drives this process is called the Traveler Verification Service, or TVS.

Or this same biometric (identification based on physical distinguishing characteristics) technology could be used to capture images of migrants in Central Mexico and submitted to CBP along with their biographical information.

Then the images and information would be compared to vast databases maintained by the DHS to search all encounters at the border since the beginning of time (effectively) and check whether the migrant in question was involved in any of them. The image is further used for a “liveness check,” aka to verify the migrant’s identity after the appointment has been secured, to ensure that they’re the same person who made the appointment.

Why am I making this comparison?

  • To show how the technology used in the CBP One app mirrors what was already in use for, and was even initially tested on, citizens of other countries visiting the U.S. by air.
  • To show how rigorous the comparison process is– to the point that when it’s used on Americans,2 they become concerned for their own privacy and how that data is gathered and used. As they should be, frankly.
  • To show how, therefore, the claims that CBP One is somehow being used to allow “otherwise impermissible,” “illegal,” or even “criminal” immigrants into the country are unmitigated codswallop.


In fact, this app was, until recently, effectively the only way to enter the country legally.3 Even for asylum seekers, who are not just permitted but required, under U.S.4 and international law, to be physically present within the United States to apply for asylum, and have been since 1967.

That hasn’t been acknowledged in America for an extremely long time, but nevertheless– as rights become further and further violated, it becomes increasingly important to remember what they are.

But let’s snap back to the present, where CBP One,5 or at least its scheduling functionality (has it been used for much else? Hard to say) was shut down as of January 20 at noon.

And now we have a new DHS-developed technology– a registry6 that immigrants staying in the country for 30 days or long will be required to sign up for, providing biometric data in the form of fingerprints, to facilitate their “mass self-deportation.” Because yes, that’s the goal, according to a DHS statement7 issued Tuesday.

Compelling mass self-deportation8 is a safer path for aliens and law enforcement, and saves U.S. taxpayer dollars, in addition to conserving valuable Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) resources needed to keep Americans safe.

Here’s the part that nearly gave me an aneurysm, from newly-installed Secretary of DHS Kristi Noem:9

We’re just going to start enforcing it to make sure [the undocumented immigrants] go back home, And when they want to be an American, then they can come and visit us again.

I have some questions for Ms. Noem.


What does she think migrants are here to do in the first place? Has she tried asking them if they want to be Americans?

Has she offered them a route to citizenship? Did she send the invitation to “come and visit us again” out on pretty stationary, with an enclosed coupon for Cracker Barrel?

How are they supposed to “come visit us again” after they’ve been “mass deported” back to the same countries they tried to escape due to imminent threat to their lives and well-being, and the only way to “come back to visit” legally has just been obliterated before their eyes?

Did she tell them the Cracker Barrel’s door is locked with a deadbolt?


Does she know who said this, in 2018?10

Under this plan, the illegal aliens will no longer get a free pass into our country by lodging meritless claims in seeking asylum. Instead, migrants seeking asylum will have to present themselves lawfully at a port of entry. So they’re going to have to lawfully present themselves at a port of entry. Those who choose to break our laws and enter illegally will no longer be able to use meritless claims to gain automatic admission into our country. We will hold them — for a long time, if necessary.

Did he mean it?

Does he remember saying it?

Does it matter?

The First Lady broke immigration laws,11 as did the Co-President,12 but nobody’s demanding their fingerprints and encouraging them to “self-deport.”

And yet undocumented immigrants are forced to live in a tautology where they will be “illegal” no matter what they do, while the shining promise of existing in America legally isn’t just out of reach, but is dangled teasingly over their heads by the government of the same country with a mandate to welcome them in– the poor, the tired, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The people seeking a better life than they could have in the “shithole countries”13 (remember that?) from whence they came.

While I might consider the CBP One app to be a cruel joke, when it was first used to assist migrants, it was as a way for NGOs (non-governmental organizations) to locate those who had been forced into Mexico by the previous Trump administration as part of the so-called Migrant Protection Protocols, and bring them back to the border for a hearing. It was a tool used for collaboration between DHS and NGOs, to make sure that at least some of the migrants who have a right to enter the country were allowed to exercise it

It was a way to be slightly less gratuitously cruel to people, existing in a state of greater desperation than anyone in DHS personally could fathom, who just want to find safety and create a better life.

And now that’s gone, everything’s made up, and the law doesn’t matter.

But maybe I can spend the second half of this post saying something constructive. Some things that might actually help:

  • Stay informed and make good judgments. I know, I know, it’s a horrorshow that can be unbearable to watch/read/listen. But for example, it’s important to know when ICE isn’t going to raid your local church or school because they’re not allowed to raid “sensitive locations,” and you can avoid raising a panic unnecessarily. If you know when to be scared, and how much, that alleviates some of the “scared at 11, 24/7” feeling that will drive you into the ground.
  • Help out the organizations doing the work. I strongly recommend the Immigration Council, who are working their asses off to seek justice for migrants and deserve every dollar you care to donate. Sign up for a newsletter so you don’t have to keep wading through the shouting and rhetoric to learn what’s actually happening with immigration.
  • Show up for “sanctuary policies” at a city council meetings and anywhere in your community having discussions on that topic14 to learn what protections can be provided under those policies for migrants in your area. Remind people, if necessary, that sanctuary jurisdictions are in full compliance with federal law. Don’t let your local government and law enforcement get bullied into doing ICE’s dirty work.
  • Remind people of how immigration is supposed to work. How America is founded on immigration, and how it was once possible to just “show up” at Ellis Island, get checked out by a doctor, and saunter your way in. Show them this video of George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan arguing, in a debate at the League of Women Voters in 1980, about who had a more compassionate and reasonable policy for how to make migrants feel welcome in America, and watch their heads explode.
  • Find common ground
    • Find somebody you disagree with about immigration, sit down with them, and do this:
      • Make some choices about how it should work, if it were totally up to you. No basing arguments on facts not in evidence (also known as BSing), and no predictions.
      • Make your rules clear to each other. You don’t have to agree– you just need to fully understand where each other stands. When you reach the point of “I hear you saying this,” followed by “Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying,” you’ve calibrated correctly.
      • Look up how it actually works. Look at how it’s handled elsewhere in the world, and how it’s been handled before.15
      • Look up what the conditions, the stats, etc., actually are. Learn about the countries and cultures that asylum seekers and refugees are emigrating from.
      • Go back to the rules you created earlier, and re-evaluate. Amend the rules accordingly. Takesies-backsies are not just allowed, but encouraged.
      • This is the hard part: Reconcile how things are with how you want them to be. Explain how doing things your way would make it better– not just better than the status quo, but better than what your partner has in mind.


This is a conversation about how to treat populations of other people who are not necessarily any more similar to each other than you are to that neighbor you hate for letting his dog poop in your yard. Probably a lot less, actually.

So as an added layer of difficulty, stimulate those empathy muscles and walk through all six steps with a hypothetical family in mind, rather than a faceless mass. Give them names, nationalities, motivations. Then imagine how they fare, according to your rules, the current rules, your partner’s rules, etc.

There is no possible way to say “Good luck with that” with the earnest intensity that I mean to put behind it. It’s going to sound dismissive no matter what. But with every fiber of my being, and every ounce of sincerity that is possible to convey, I nevertheless say: Good luck with that.

  1. https://giantif.com/2024/10/04/j-d-vances-weird-dumb-little-racist-jab-at-cbp-one/ ↩︎
  2. Including some of the same Americans who think that the U.S. isn’t scrutinizing migrants enough… ↩︎
  3. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/05/16/2023-10146/circumvention-of-lawful-pathways ↩︎
  4. The U.S. is is bound by the 1951 Refugee Convention (through its adoption of the 1967 Protocol) and the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), which explicitly allows anyone physically present in the U.S.—regardless of how they arrived—to apply for asylum. ↩︎
  5. https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/national-media-release/cbp-removes-scheduling-functionality-cbp-one-app ↩︎
  6. https://www.axios.com/2025/02/26/trump-immigrants-registry-jail-fine-threat ↩︎
  7. https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/02/25/secretary-noem-announces-agency-will-enforce-laws-penalize-aliens-country-illegally ↩︎
  8. If it’s compelled, how is it self-deportation? See also “compel them to leave the country voluntarily.” ↩︎
  9. https://www.axios.com/2025/02/26/trump-immigrants-registry-jail-fine-threat ↩︎
  10. https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-illegal-immigration-crisis-border-security/ ↩︎
  11. https://www.vox.com/2016/11/5/13533816/melania-trump-illegal-immigrant ↩︎
  12. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/10/26/elon-musk-immigration-status/ ↩︎
  13. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-referred-haiti-african-countries-shithole-nations-n836946 ↩︎
  14. https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/sanctuary-policies-overview ↩︎
  15. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/12/29/mass-deportation-immigration-history-00195729 ↩︎