The USCIS is actively engaged in mining data from its own records, as well of those of other federal agencies and some private databases. The extent of the data developed is genuinely amazing. A recent response to a Privacy Act Information request filed by an attorney revealed that DHS records on him included his airline seat preferences, travel agencies used, credit card information, and other very similar items of information that appear to have no relevancy to national security or any legitimate government interest. 

We have known for some time that the USCIS has access to state motor vehicle databases and private credit agency databases. It appears that they are also accessing telephone and credit card records. 

The USCIS has made no secret of their intent to gather this type of information. For example, in the USCIS Strategic Plan, they disclose: 

“We will develop a national fraud database and software that will enhance our ability to analyze fraud reactively as well as identify fraud in an automated, proactive manner. We will apply techniques such as data mining and pattern recognition to proactively identify potential cases of misrepresentation or fraud earlier in the adjudications process. For instance, every new application will be automatically searched against known indicators of fraud. More accurate and robust fraud research will improve our adjudications process.” 

In the USCIS 2006 Backlog Elimination Plan, they advised: 

“Identification of immigration fraud is being greatly facilitated by the development and launch of the new FDNS Data System. Release 2 of this tool, which will provide even greater fraud detection capabilities through Analytics and Data Mining, is under development.” 

In the public version of the DHS Data Mining Report (2006), they stated: 

“Relevant records that are identified are further investigated and evaluated through use of the paper and electronic immigration files of DHS. Publicly available information, and data from commercial data aggregators, may also be searched.” 

 A year later, the DHS Data Mining Report (2007) revealed: 

“FDNS-DS tracks immigration related fraud, public safety referrals to ICE, and national security concerns discovered during the background checks performed on persons applying for immigration-related benefits. FDNS consolidates status information and results of administrative investigations, background checks, adjudication processes, and benefit fraud assessments required for completion of immigration eligibility petitions and application determinations in order to identify possible fraud.” 

While all of this data gathering is being justified in the name of anti-fraud activities, their data mining is not limited to information concerning non-resident foreign nationals. U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents are also caught up in this data gathering net.