By Dahni K. Tsuboi, CEO of Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California
For immigrant communities across California, data privacy is a matter of safety and survival. It is the first line of defense against ICE surveillance and an aggressive administration intent on government overreach. Information shared to secure employment, access healthcare, obtain legal assistance, or navigate daily life can reveal deeply sensitive details like immigration status, family relationships, or daily movements.
These concerns have intensified as federal immigration authorities increasingly rely on commercially available data for enforcement. The threats are particularly acute for the Asian American community: nearly 6 in 10 are foreign-born, and an estimated 1 in 7 Asian immigrants are undocumented.
The fear of data misuse extends across all immigrants and victims of abuse. Any personal information can become a tool of continued abuse if it falls into the wrong hands.
At Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California, we see these concerns firsthand.
Our client, Ms. M, came to the U.S. after her abusive husband petitioned for her immigration. Isolated by language barriers and subjected to severe abuse and coercive control, she was later excluded from divorce and custody proceedings that resulted in her removal from the family home and loss of custody of her child.
After escaping to safety, confidentiality became critical. Her abuser had previously tracked down his ex-wife and threatened her by locating a women’s shelter and identifying her caseworker. Ms. M feared the same, and that any information shared beyond trusted organizations could jeopardize her safety. Like many immigrant survivors, her abuser had manipulated her into believing that seeking help would cost her custody of her child.
When our community is too afraid to seek critical support because they do not trust that their personal information is secure, our privacy failures become barriers to safety and justice.
Often without knowing it, many of us surrender information every time we carry a smartphone. That information is then packaged and repurposed into digital profiles that lay bare the most sensitive parts of our lives – all accessible to anyone with little oversight. That’s why ICE doesn’t need its own surveillance infrastructure. All of it is for sale.
Data brokers aggregate and sell the commercial data Californians generate daily, and immigration enforcement is just another customer. Their reach extends far beyond targeted advertising – consider Mobilewalla, a data broker that tracked the locations of people who attended protests following the murder of George Floyd.
ICE operates in the same marketplace. Through contracts with vendors like Palantir and Penlink, the agency uses commercially purchased data to identify and track people its algorithms have flagged as undocumented. That dragnet has ensnared American citizens and triggered wrongful detentions, spreading fear through communities across the state.
California must confront an uncomfortable question: should the state keep incentivizing a marketplace built on our most sensitive data? Two bills before the legislature, AB 322 and AB 1542, begin to answer it. AB 322 would place strict limits on how geolocation data is collected and used. AB 1542 would ban the sale and sharing of sensitive personal information, including immigration status, health records.
Opponents claim these measures would compromise public safety by restricting information sharing during emergencies, but “sharing” here covers only data disclosed for behavioral advertising. Emergency communications are untouched. That opponents have centered this objection reveals what’s actually at stake for them: not public safety, but the uninterrupted ability to target ads.
In a moment when California leaders have used lofty rhetoric to protect our people from federal overreach, promises alone are not enough. AB 322 and AB 1542 are the action those promises require. These bills are not solely about immigration enforcement. They’re about protecting survivors of domestic abuse and sex trafficking like Ms. M, about preserving access to reproductive and gender-affirming care without fear of surveillance, and about the basic freedom to move through the world without every step being recorded, sold, and used against you.
The opposition has made clear what they are actually defending: a profit model built on knowing everything about everyone. As immigrant communities continue to face the most severe effects of heightened surveillance, California’s leaders must make a different choice to live up to our commitment to privacy for all.
