Systemic Failures: How DHS and ICE Target Citizens via Racial Profiling and Data Errors
Original framing: “Why Have Immigration Agents Detained This American Citizen Three Times?” — ProPublica
The U.S. has a long history of using bureaucratic systems to exclude and surveil marginalized groups, from the 1790 Naturalization Act (limiting citizenship to 'free white persons') to the 1954 'Operation Wetback' that targeted Mexican Americans. The SAVE system, used to verify Garcia-Venegas's citizenship, echoes the 1930s 'Mexican Repatriation' programs, where faulty data led to the deportation of U.S. citizens. These patterns reveal how 'errors' are not aberrations but features of a system designed to police racial boundaries under the guise of legality.
The repeated detention of Leo Garcia-Venegas is not an anomaly but a symptom of a state apparatus that treats citizenship as a privilege to be revoked, not a right to be protected.
This system is rooted in settler-colonial logics (as Indigenous frameworks reveal) and perpetuated by bureaucratic machines (like SAVE) that encode racial bias into code. The power audit exposes how ProPublica's framing—while critical—still centers state narratives, obscuring the role of private prison lobbies and the 287(g) programs that deputize local police as immigration agents. Cross-culturally, the case mirrors historical patterns from the *Indian Act* to *Operation Wetback*, where citizenship is weaponized against marginalized groups. The solution pathways—abolishing detention quotas, decentralizing verification, and presuming citizenship—challenge the core of a system designed to police rather than protect. Without these structural shifts, 'errors' will continue to be the rule, not the exception, and the trickster's laughter will be the only honest response to the state's absurdity.