"ICE Is Grabbing Data From Schools and Abortion Clinics" 3 April 2023

...US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are using an obscure legal tool to demand data from elementary schools, news organizations, and abortion clinics in ways that, some experts say, may be illegal. While these administrative subpoenas, known as 1509 custom summonses, are meant to be used only in criminal investigations about illegal imports or unpaid customs duties, WIRED found that the agency has deployed them to seek records that seemingly have little or nothing to do with customs violations...

...A The primary recipients of 1509s include telecommunications companies, major tech firms, money transfer services, airlines, and even utility companies. But it’s the edge cases that have drawn the most concern among legal experts.

The outlier cases include custom summonses that sought records from a youth soccer league in Texas; surveillance video from a major abortion provider in Illinois; student records from an elementary school in Georgia; health records from a major state university’s student health services; data from three boards of elections or election departments; and data from a Lutheran organization that provides refugees with humanitarian and housing support. In at least two instances, agents at ICE used the custom summons to pressure news organizations to reveal information about their sources. 

All of this is done without judicial oversight...

...The subpoena-tracking database that WIRED obtained offers the most detailed breakdown of how ICE has been using the customs summons to date. The data shows that between January 4, 2016, and August 22, 2022, ICE issued 172,679 summonses, averaging more than 70 per day. Half of these were sent to telecommunications companies like AT&T, T-Mobile, and Comcast. Big technology companies like Google, Meta, and Microsoft collectively received nearly 15,000 summonses. Of the thousands of summonses sent to social media companies, Meta and Snapchat make up the vast majority...

...Of these companies, only Meta responded to our requests for comment, but it declined to answer questions and instead referred to its transparency reports...