In the midst of nationwide protests against police brutality, local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies have reacted with brutal force and widespread surveillance. Not only are many agencies suppressing protest and intimidating protestors with batons and tear gas on the ground — they are also circling overhead. The government is using a deeply invasive, coordinated aerial surveillance campaign to monitor Black Lives Matter protests, gather information, and surveil people exercising their First Amendment rights.
 
Today, we submitted Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to the Federal Aviation Administration, Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Justice calling for more information on the use of aerial surveillance on protesters.
 
The government has deployed helicopters, airplanes, and border drones over American cities to systematically monitor peaceful protests . An investigative report by the New York Times found that the Department of Homeland Security alone had logged at least 270 hours of surveillance footage on these racial justice protests this spring and summer. The collected footage was ultimately channeled into a digital network — accessible by federal and local law enforcement agencies for use in future investigations — with the ominous name “the Big Pipe.” Other law enforcement and military agencies, including the FBI, National Guard, and local police departments also requested deployment of private or government-owned aircraft for the purpose of surveilling protests. This widespread surveillance has been carried out across the country — from the big-city protests in NYC, Portland, Chicago and LA, to 20-person protests in small towns across the country.
 
This surveillance has also been carried out with an unjustifiable level of secrecy. Agencies like the FBI regularly try to hide the identity of their aircraft by registering them through dummy corporations. For weeks, U.S. Customs and Border Protection refused to say which agency had requested use of its Predator border drone over Minneapolis protests in May. Protesters and communities still have no idea what kind of cutting edge, high-tech equipment these aircraft — piloted and unpiloted — may be carrying.
 
As aerial surveillance continues, the public deserves much more information. In our FOIA requests, we are asking for information about the involvement of private companies; coordination between different law enforcement agencies; the processes by which surveillance flights are proposed, approved, or authorized; the scope of surveillance; the capabilities of the cameras and other surveillance tools deployed; and the surveillance footage itself.
 
We live in a democracy and Americans have a right to decide what kinds of surveillance law enforcement is permitted to engage in over our communities. But we can’t do that if we don’t know what’s going on.
 
A prime example of government policymaking that needs more sunlight is the FAA’s issuance of a “temporary flight restriction” over Portland in July, as that city became the center of renewed nationwide protests over police abuse in general and abusive practices by federal officers, sent to the city over local objections, in particular.
 
Unfortunately, there is a history of the FAA creating flight restrictions over protests at the request of law enforcement to limit the ability of reporters and community members to engage in aerial photography of police behavior. The agency restricted airspace over the Dakota Access Pipeline protests in 2016, and before that in Ferguson, Missouri during the 2014 protests following the death of Michael Brown. In 2014, documents and audio recordings proved that the purpose of the Ferguson no-fly zone was not the protection of public safety, as government agents claimed, but to keep news helicopters away.
 
In Portland, Oregon, the FAA’s restrictions prohibit drones except for those with “an approved special governmental interest airspace waiver that has been granted for operations in direct support of an active national defense, homeland security, law enforcement, firefighting, search and rescue or disaster response mission.”
 
In short, this flight restriction leaves room for government agencies to use aircraft to surveil the public, but severely limits the ability of the public to record the government. That may be how law enforcement agencies like it, but it’s exactly backward: Government surveillance of the public should be strictly regulated, but the public’s ability to monitor what law enforcement officials are doing should be broadly free and unrestricted. That is why protesters should be able to record the police using drones — and that is why we have filed a FOIA request to find out more about aerial surveillance of protests by law enforcement.

Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project,
& Nicola Morrow, Paralegal, ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project

After a rebuke from the Supreme Court, President Trump is again trying to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program — a program that protects over 700,000 people from deportation and allows them to work and attend school in the United States, their home. The White House is replacing the full DACA program with a skeleton program that will accept no new applicants and renew protection for only one year, instead of two. 

I served in the Obama administration at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the government agency responsible for creating and launching DACA. It was the result of over a decade of brave advocacy by undocumented youth, who rallied the country’s support by sharing their stories and demanding that the United States see them as the Americans that they are. While we were proud of the program, we knew that DACA was not the end goal for this movement. While critically important, it would only temporarily protect Dreamers for two years at a time. Without permanent, legislative protections, the fate of Dreamers and their families would continue to be at risk. 

When President Trump took office, our fears came true. In the first year, his administration threw the lives of DACA recipients into limbo and attempted to end the program, leaving Dreamers unable to plan for their futures, living under a constant threat of potential deportation. As the country waited for a DACA decision from the Supreme Court, ICE promised to start deporting DACA recipients if given the opportunity. 

But on June 18, 2020, DACA recipients — and America — won. The Supreme Court sided with the lower courts and the American people by declaring the Trump administration’s process of rescinding DACA illegal, “arbitrary, and capricious.” The Trump administration was ordered to accept DACA renewals and new DACA applications, and restore the DACA program to its original state. Instead, the White House is hell-bent on ripping the rug out from underneath 700,000 Americans in waiting, even though he knows that the American people, including most Trump supporters, support Dreamers. Trump’s recent changes to DACA shut hundreds and thousands of immigrant youth out of the program’s protections, leaving them at continued risk of deportation. We know and fear that his next step is a complete end to DACA.  
Our immigration system remains unjust, inhumane, and irrevocably broken, and the ACLU will continue to fight in Congress for permanent legislative protections for all undocumented youth. We will also keep fighting for automatic extensions of DACA and Temporary Protected Status (TPS) work permits during the pandemic.

The Senate must act now to take up and pass the American Dream and Promise Act, which would provide protection from deportation and a fair path to citizenship for Dreamers and immigrants eligible for TPS and Deferred Enforced Departure (DED). While the ACLU remains troubled by provisions in the bill that run counter to basic due process principles, it would nonetheless benefit more than two million people and represent a crucial step toward fundamental reform of an unjust system. 

And as Black and Brown communities fight for historic, overdue reforms to state and local law enforcement, it is critical not to forget that ICE and Customs and Border Protection sow fear and uncertainty in communities of color every day. Congress must divest funding from the federal police forces within these agencies that threaten DACA recipients, their families, and our communities writ large.

We will also be fighting for so much more. States must take steps to vastly improve the wellbeing of undocumented youth and protect them from the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant crusade. States should remove barriers that prevent Dreamers from pursuing their education and careers by allowing access to in-state tuition, financial aid, and professional licenses for all, regardless of immigration status. They must also reject the administration’s promise to deport Dreamers and refuse to do ICE and CBP’s bidding. Governors should take steps to restrict their states from spending any resources to collaborate with immigration enforcement agencies. 

As long as Congress refuses to provide a path to citizenship for undocumented youth, we will advocate for broad administrative relief that expands the number of people eligible for protection. DACA was designed narrowly, and forces recipients to spend enormous resources — $495 for the application, plus legal fees —  to renew their status originally every two years, and now every year. We will advocate for DACA to provide longer periods of protection between renewals and for application fees to be truly affordable. And finally, we will keep fighting for a fair, humane, and affordable path to citizenship in Congress so that DACA recipients, their undocumented family members, and all immigrant communities can access full citizenship. 

While Dreamers won in the Supreme Court, Trump continues his anti-immigrant crusade. The fight for permanent protections and a humane immigration system continues.

Andrea Flores, Deputy Director of Policy, ACLU's Equality Division

Despite their intended role as peacekeepers, private university officers are often responsible for violence against students and local residents alike. In July 2015, a University of Cincinnati police officer fatally shot unarmed 37-year-old Sam DuBose. Tyrone West, a 44-year-old Black man, was killed by Morgan State University police in 2013 during a traffic stop. And in 2018, a University of Chicago police officer shot fourth-year student Charles Thomas. 

Sam DuBrose, Tyrone West, and Charles Thomas are just three names on an ever-growing list of people who have been injured or lost their lives at the hands of private police officers. Student dollars go toward the upkeep of these oppressive institutions, which are responsible for the violence and mutilation of bodies.

The presence of these forces on and off campus is not welcome — not by students, and not by the communities at large. 

More than one third of four-year colleges across the country are equipped with their own well-funded, private, and armed police forces that make arrests every day. Yet despite functioning as full-fledged law enforcement, these departments are able to evade public record laws, allowing countless cases of police abuse and force to go unseen and unpunished.

In most states, public record laws apply to private organizations that employ government authority to perform a governmental function. There is no question that campus police fall into this category. But universities continue to argue their private status makes them exempt from such records requests, protecting themselves and displaying a flagrant disregard for accountability. 

The Clery Act, signed in 1990, aimed to create accountability for campus police forces. But the law does not go nearly far enough. For example, while it requires the maintenance of a daily crime log, campus forces often provide little detail and are easily able to withhold information. This statute is the sole measure in place to ensure the accountability of armed campus police officers. 

The majority of these private forces are not just policing their respective campuses, but also have jurisdiction deep in local cities. For example, the University of Chicago is home to one of the largest private police forces in the world. The student body numbers under 15,000, but the UC Police Department puts boots down in surrounding neighborhoods, placing 65,000 city residents under the watch of a force with virtually no accountability. 

This arrangement is not unique to Chicago. In cities like Detroit, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and South Bend, Indiana, campus police departments also patrol in the city, often in predominantly Black neighborhoods which already suffer from devastating structural inequalities. People of color, especially Black folks, feel afraid of the people meant to make them feel safe. Educational institutions and the spaces around them can be emancipatory; yet, people of color find themselves in chains.

Young people have started to take notice, and have called for the end to private police on campus. Last year, students at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore demanded the university reverse its decision to create its own police department. Coalitions of students, faculty members, and neighbors at Harvard University, University of Virginia, Columbia University, and Ohio State University have also called for the removal of private police forces. 

But let’s be clear: Universities without private police forces are not spared from the horrors of police brutality. Partnerships with local police are also bringing unwanted publicly funded officers onto campuses. 

While these forces may not run into the same issues with open-record laws, they come with their own array of atrocities. Public police departments with known patterns of corruption, excessive use of force, and racial profiling are welcomed onto campuses with open arms by university administrators. 

Following demands organized by students, the University of Minnesota recently agreed to cut ties with the Minneapolis Police Department. Northwestern University, Columbia University, and New York University students are also calling on their administrators to cut ties with local police. Administrators should follow the lead of student activists and institutions like the University of Minnesota and cut ties with local police departments. Universities are responsible for the safety of their students and the surrounding community  — and police have proven time and time again to pose a threat to safety, rather than promote it.

As calls to defund the police grow, it is imperative that private police forces with no accountability are prioritized. Heavily armed police forces with no transparency are inexcusable, and university administrations must move to defund them. On college campuses, our nation’s playgrounds for research and discovery, we must protect our young minds and the precious communities that surround them at all costs.

Any other choice is a blatant denial of safety and justice to people across the country 一 those who pay to attend these institutions, and those who live in the communities intruded upon by them.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that all three students were killed by university police. Charles Thomas was injured, not killed. We regret this error.

Sanjali De Silva, Communications Intern, ACLU