Why is ICE tracking millions of wire transfers to Mexico? Critics question ‘bulk surveillance’
PHOENIX – The chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance is asking for an investigation of what he called a secret mass surveillance program to collect information indiscriminately on millions of money transfers sent mostly by immigrants living in the four Southwest border states to Mexico.
But officials that led efforts to begin scrubbing money transfer data more than a decade ago say this is a valuable, proven tool to combat human smuggling and money laundering along the U.S.-Mexico border.