Inside an deserted work truck in northern Orange County one current Saturday sat a steaming cup of espresso and a Danish with a chew taken out of it. The remnants of an odd morning, all of the sudden interrupted.
The truck belonged to a person who had gone out for gasoline and a automotive wash earlier than the workweek. He by no means made it dwelling. ICE brokers had taken him into custody after a roadside cease, leaving his truck in a close-by car parking zone.
Shortly afterward, I accompanied one other neighborhood volunteer to inform his spouse what had occurred. She cried out, and her physique started to shake. Her husband had lived and labored in the USA for many years. Now she, a U.S. citizen and their U.S.-born youngsters confronted the pressing process of finding him, guaranteeing he obtained lifesaving treatment, and determining how their household would survive with out him. His story is turning into more and more acquainted throughout Orange County.
Because the Trump administration escalates immigration enforcement throughout Southern California, native rapid-response teams report a disturbing new sample: federal brokers stopping Latino males driving landscaping and building vehicles, taking them into custody and leaving their autos behind.
These arrests elevate troubling questions: How are immigration brokers figuring out the individuals they cease? What position are authorities databases and surveillance applied sciences enjoying? As a sociologist who research immigration, I see two linked points: the devastation enforcement inflicts on households and communities, and the increasing surveillance infrastructure that provides the federal government better energy to establish and goal individuals of their on a regular basis lives.
In accordance with research I co-authored at USC’s Equity Research Institute, roughly 211,000 undocumented immigrants stay in Orange County. Roughly three-quarters have lived in the USA for greater than a decade. They’re deeply rooted residents who’ve constructed households, companies and neighborhood ties. Undocumented immigrants account for about 33% of staff in constructing and grounds cleansing and upkeep occupations and 29% in building trades. Fifteen % of employed undocumented adults within the county ages 25 to 64 are small enterprise homeowners. These staff are integral to our financial system. Eradicating them from the workforce disrupts companies, reduces family spending and might create labor shortages that elevate prices all through the county.
Immigration enforcement is usually framed as eradicating people who lack authorized standing. However individuals don’t stay as remoted people. Our analysis estimates that roughly 491,000 Orange County residents are undocumented or stay with undocumented relations, together with greater than 216,000 U.S. residents.
Detaining one particular person can destabilize a complete community of relationships and financial assist constructed over many years. These deeply rooted lives might be upended right away by means of routine encounters facilitated by an increasing infrastructure of immigration surveillance.
A new investigation by the University of Washington’s Center for Human Rights paperwork how federal immigration brokers use state motorized vehicle data to facilitate roadside arrests. Researchers describe a course of that may unfold in minutes. Brokers establish a automobile, run its license plate to acquire the registered proprietor’s title and cross-reference that data in opposition to federal databases. The knowledge can then be used to establish individuals for detention.
The researchers recognized 4 pathways by means of which immigration authorities acquire motorized vehicle data: direct DMV entry, interstate regulation enforcement networks, business information brokers, and data shared by state or native police. One vital pathway is Nlets, the Worldwide Justice and Public Security Community, which permits regulation enforcement businesses to question driver’s license and automobile registration data throughout state strains. California Car Code 1808.48 prohibits the usage of noncriminal DMV data for immigration enforcement. But interstate networks like Nlets elevate questions on whether or not federal authorities can acquire data by means of oblique channels regardless of these restrictions.
In simply the primary 5 months of 2026, the College of Washington research discovered that DHS businesses performed greater than 1 million searches of Washington state’s driver and automobile data. These searches occurred regardless of Washington’s Keep Washington Working Act, which restricts state businesses’ participation in federal immigration enforcement and limits sure disclosures of private data. Maryland has confronted comparable issues regardless of a state law requiring a judicial warrant for federal immigration authorities to entry protected motorized vehicle data.
The findings expose a troubling actuality: States can enact legal guidelines to guard residents’ privateness, however these protections might be undermined when federal businesses acquire the identical data by means of interconnected regulation enforcement networks. Privateness protections imply little if the federal government can merely discover a approach round them. California was among the many states researchers sought to look at, however they may not acquire the data wanted to find out whether or not its protections are working. Proof from Orange County reveals why these issues are removed from hypothetical.
A June 2025 CalMatters investigation documented greater than 100 situations in roughly one month by which Southern California regulation enforcement businesses shared license plate reader information with ICE, regardless of California regulation prohibiting such sharing. The Orange County Sheriff’s Division was among the many businesses recognized.
The searches concerned expertise offered by Flock Security, whose license plate readers have sparked “bipartisan backlash” over mass surveillance, police misuse and the erosion of civil liberties. By recording automobile actions and making that data searchable throughout jurisdictions, these methods can allow regulation enforcement to reconstruct individuals’s actions, associations and every day routines with out individualized suspicion or a judicial warrant.
The hazard shouldn’t be merely that the federal government has entry to extra details about us. It’s that this data can develop the federal government’s energy to resolve who turns into a goal of suspicion, surveillance and detention. And these surveillance methods usually are not socially impartial. The choice about whose plate to look is made by human beings. If ICE brokers disproportionately single out landscaping vehicles, building autos or drivers they understand to be Latino, seemingly impartial expertise can facilitate racial profiling whereas giving discriminatory enforcement the looks of goal policing.
This increasing surveillance doesn’t cease at immigration enforcement. University of Washington researchers additionally documented federal immigration brokers querying the license plates of U.S. residents observing ICE operations. The identical infrastructure used to establish individuals for immigration enforcement can be utilized to observe these exercising their 1st Modification rights to legally observe regulation enforcement. This alerts not merely a lack of particular person privateness, however a weakening of the democratic freedoms that enable individuals to problem authorities energy. Immigration enforcement is turning into a testing floor for the growth of surveillance and the bounds of constitutional protections.
California can not enable these practices to grow to be normalized. Defending civil liberties requires greater than legal guidelines on the books. It requires significant oversight and accountability. California’s legal professional common ought to examine whether or not federal immigration authorities entry DMV data, significantly by means of Nlets. In July, Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta issued guidance under SB 580 addressing database safeguards, audits and vendor oversight. California should guarantee these protections are enforced, not merely adopted on paper.
At present, these surveillance methods are getting used to establish and goal our immigrant neighborhood. However the infrastructure being constructed doesn’t distinguish between immigrants and residents. As soon as we normalize the federal government’s energy to trace individuals, monitor their actions and rework odd actions into alternatives for surveillance and enforcement, we put everybody’s civil liberties in danger.
Jody Agius Vallejo is a professor of sociology at USC and affiliate director of the USC Fairness Analysis Institute.
