It seems like a million years ago, but it’s only been a few months since the Trump administration opened the Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE) hotline, launched under the guise of public safety but in reality a disgusting smear campaign to further demonize undocumented immigrants. While Splinter notes that a large portion of the calls initially made to VOICE were from wonderful Americans reporting green space aliens (thank you, Daily Kos community), a report finds others embraced the sinister, deplorable intentions envisioned by Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, and the rest of his anti-immigrant administration. Records “show that hundreds of Americans seized on the hotline to lodge secret accusations against acquaintances, neighbors, or even their own family members, often to advance petty personal grievances”:
One caller, for instance, complained that her granddaughter was living in Florida with an undocumented immigrant, and further alleged that the immigrant was a sex offender. The suspect, the caller said, was in the process of receiving United States citizenship. Public records for the unredacted address in the call log did identify a middle-aged man with a Latino name living there, but not one who was listed on a sex-offender registry.
Beyond family strife, callers also sought to involve ICE in business disputes. One caller made an immigration complaint against an employee on a work visa at a ballroom-dance studio who was allegedly trying to start her own studio and lure customers away. Callers accused undocumented people of working at painting companies, a drywall installer, a demolition firm, a luxury resort, a foundry, a dairy, an alehouse, a Subway, and an “adult entertainment club.” They provided addresses, names, and sometimes even specific working hours.
“Some people appeared to go to great lengths to deliver information to the feds,” notes Splinter. “One caller, seeking to report a pair of supposedly undocumented workers, provided full names and aliases for both of them, along with the make, color, and license plate of the car they used, and the facts that they worked on a farm and attended a particular Planet Fitness gym ‘in the afternoons.’ Nowhere did the report include any claims of criminal activity beyond the alleged use of false documents.” Beyond being complicit in the racial profiling and the stalking of brown people, the VOICE office has also been incompetent—shortly after the launch, the administration came under fire for mistakenly including babies and and toddlers in its VOICE database of “bad hombres” under Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody.
It’s no stretch or exaggeration to say that other personal calls documented by Splinter mirror the pettiness, vindictiveness, and cruelty that have become trademarks of the Trump administration and his ICE mass deportation force. “On May 25, 2017, one man called to say that his stepson was violating a restraining order by parking his car near his house. He didn’t want his wife to know that he was trying to get her son deported.” Other callers made similar efforts to turn over family members and ex-spouses:
- Caller requested to report her mother-in law and sister-in law. Caller stated these individuals came to the U.S. as tourists and stayed in the U.S. in order to get legal status.
- Caller stated the undocumented individual is destroying her family and is committing adultery.
- Caller requested to report his ex wife that is undocumented as an overstayed on her visa.
- Caller requested to report the illegal alien because the illegal alien will not let her see [her] granddaughter.
“One caller went so far as to provide the date and location of an upcoming divorce hearing at which the accused undocumented immigrant was scheduled to appear,” mirroring the deplorable tactic undertaken by some ICE agents who have stalked undocumented immigrants outside courthouses in order to arrest them, including sweeping up a transgender woman who was trying to obtain a restraining order against her abuser. Advocates believe her abuser may have tipped off ICE agents on her whereabouts. Splinter found that there “are also multiple calls from people hoping to turn ICE enforcement against the people who have accused them of domestic violence”:
- Caller requested to report an undocumented alien who is accusing him of domestic violence in order to obtain legal status. Caller claims subject is his legal wife.
- Caller wanted to know how to report an illegal marriage (sham marriage) with an immigration benefit involved. Caller stated that the subject [name redacted by Splinter] pressed domestic violence charges against her in order to receive a Visa.
- Caller claimed subject made false accusations of domestic violence towards the caller. Caller claimed subject is trying to claim Asylum through the false accusation of domestic violation in order for subject to stay in the U.S.
Worse yet, personal information of both callers and the people they were reporting—including phone numbers, addresses, and Social Security numbers—appears to have been shortly publicly available. ICE provided a redacted spreadsheet to Splinter in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, but Splinter was also able to track down a second spreadsheet via a simple Google search. This was one only partially redacted. “Several hours after this story was published, the entire online library of FOIA documents from ICE—all the public records that the agency has ever released—went offline”:
Publicly, the VOICE hotline is not supposed to be a crime-reporting tool at all, but a means of connecting victims and witnesses in existing cases with support services and with more information about the people accused. But internal training materials for the hotline, obtained by Splinter, contradict that mission statement, saying that the hotline “will provide a means for persons to report suspected criminal activity.”
“Months after the creation of the VOICE program, it’s clear that it’s exactly what we feared it would be,” said Javier Valdés of the immigrant rights group Make the Road New York. “A sinister public relations ploy to paint immigrants as criminals and foster fear in our communities, all with the despicable goal of tearing apart our families. The program should be immediately ended.”