Student Fights in Maryland County Schools Prompt Questionable Surveillance by Homeland Security

In response to a series of student fights that broke out at public schools in Prince George’s County, Maryland, school district officials invited the Department of Homeland Security to monitor to monitor social media, allowing the agency to access student data that they could potentially collect and into any of the many federal DHS databases, creating a backdoor route for federal surveillance and immigration enforcement, reports The Intercept. Civil right and legal advocates said that they had not heard previously of homeland security offices surveilling students following school fights and warned that teenagers would likely have little idea of how their information is later used.

Data collected through youth surveillance could be used to bolster already shoddy and discriminatory gang databases. Black and Latino men are frequently added to these police databases for trivial matters like standing on certain street corners, having particular tattoos, or meeting with someone else suspected to be in a gang. A spokesperson for the federal Department of Homeland Security said their department “is not participating in social media monitoring related to PG County schools” but did not deny that it could review any data collected. Parents have raised concerns that the district’s practices were in violation of the 2019 ordinance barring cooperation with ICE, a subdivision of the Department of Homeland Security.