Look Who’s Tracking

A growing number of reporters and researchers are covering immigration through the lens of surveillance.

“Look for the margarita machine,” Francesca D’Annunzio’s source told her. D’Annunzio, an investigative reporting fellow at the Texas Observer, was delving into Operation Lone Star, Texas governor Greg Abbott’s more-than-eleven-billion-dollar anti-immigration crusade that the American Civil Liberties Union has flagged in a report for “unchecked cruelty.” D’Annunzio recalled her source saying, “With this much money being spent so quickly, I wonder if these little sheriff’s departments are spending money on things that they have no business buying. Like a margarita machine.” D’Annunzio heeded that advice, and requested a “bunch of records from some sheriff’s departments to try to see: Well, how are they spending their Operation Lone Star funds? And is there a proverbial margarita machine? And I did not find a margarita machine. I found a warrantless phone-tracking software.”