From [HERE] Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has secretly surveilled and collected records on 200 million American money transfers without obtaining a warrant for at least the last 12 years (article available here(link is external)).

The surveillance program collected records of any money transfer greater than $500 to or from Mexico from anywhere within the U.S., Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) said in a letter sent to the DHS inspector general. It also collected information on domestic or international transfers exceeding $500 to or from the states of Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas.

Officials at the Homeland Security Investigations unit at DHS provided staffers for Mr. Wyden with details about the surveillance activity last month after the senator’s office first contacted the agency seeking information about the previously undisclosed program. The briefing was the first time Congress was made aware of the program’s existence.

It couldn’t be determined exactly how authorities were using the data at issue, which appeared to solely involve money-transfer services rather than banks. Such services are popular among people who don’t have bank accounts and are commonly used to send money abroad, such as to family members back in an immigrant’s country of origin.

The surveillance program’s origins date to at least 2010, when the Arizona attorney general’s office began collecting similar data from Western Union.

Under the program, ICE investigators collected approximately six million records of international money transfers from Western Union and Maxitransfers since 2019. The data includes names, addresses and identification numbers of the money transfer senders, as well as names and addresses of the recipients.

Although ICE has agreed to stop using its summons authority, it—along with U.S. Customs and Border Protection—still uses the data made available through TRAC for investigations.

"Given the many serious issues raised by this troubling program, I request that you investigate the program's origins, how the program operated, and whether the program was consistent with agency policy, statutory law, and the Constitution," Senator Wyden wrote to DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari.