The Myth of Targeted Enforcement: How "Criminal Priority" Became "Everyone"

The Marketing Campaign: Selling "Targeted" Enforcement

Every authoritarian program needs good marketing. When selling mass surveillance and deportation to a nervous public, nothing works quite like the promise that "we're only going after the bad guys." It's the surveillance state's equivalent of "this won't hurt a bit."

The pitch was simple and compelling: ICE would use its vast surveillance powers and enforcement resources to target dangerous criminals—MS-13 gang members, violent felons, drug traffickers. Law-abiding immigrants had nothing to worry about. It was targeted enforcement, not mass deportation.

The only problem? It was complete bullshit from day one.

The Evolution of "Priority" Categories

To understand how we got from "targeting gang members" to "surveilling everyone," we need to look at how enforcement "priorities" have evolved—or more accurately, how they've expanded to include virtually everyone:

The Technology Factor: How Surveillance Enables Mission Creep

Here's the dirty secret about "targeted" enforcement: once you build the surveillance infrastructure to find the "bad guys," it becomes trivially easy to find everyone else too. And once you can find everyone, the definition of "priority" starts expanding.

Case Study: The MS-13 Dragnet

Nothing illustrates the gap between "targeted enforcement" and reality quite like ICE's MS-13 operations. What started as efforts to target a specific criminal organization quickly became a pretext for surveilling entire Latino communities.

Translation: For every actual MS-13 member arrested, ICE arrested 31 other people whose only "crime" was being in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong documentation status.

The "Gang Database" Scam

One of the most insidious aspects of "targeted" enforcement is how authorities create the appearance of criminal justification through gang databases that have virtually no oversight or accuracy requirements:

Once you're in a gang database, you become a "known gang member" for enforcement purposes—even if you've never committed a crime. It's the perfect system for creating retroactive justification for mass surveillance and arrests.

The Data Fusion Pipeline: From "Targeted" to Total

Modern immigration enforcement relies on massive data fusion systems that combine information from dozens of sources. While these systems are ostensibly designed for "targeted" operations, they actually enable comprehensive surveillance of entire populations:

Real Stories: When "Targeting" Goes Wrong

Behind every statistic are real people whose lives were destroyed by "targeted" enforcement that wasn't very targeted at all:

The Economic Incentive: Why "Everyone" Became the Target

There's a cynical economic logic to expanding enforcement beyond actual criminals: it's much easier and more profitable to arrest people with traffic violations than to investigate actual gang networks.

When your performance is measured by arrest quotas rather than public safety outcomes, the economic incentive is clear: arrest more people with less effort. "Targeted enforcement" becomes a numbers game, not a public safety strategy.

International Comparisons: When "Targeting" Actually Works

To understand how far American "targeted enforcement" has strayed from its stated goals, it's worth looking at countries that actually focus their immigration enforcement on genuine security threats:

The Real Target: Control Through Fear

Once you understand that "targeted enforcement" was never really about targeting criminals, the actual purpose becomes clear: social control through fear and surveillance.

When ICE can arrest anyone at any time for any reason (traffic violations, being in the wrong place, having the wrong friends), the effect is to make entire communities live in constant fear. People avoid hospitals, schools, and churches. They don't report crimes or cooperate with police. They become invisible, isolated, and controllable.

This isn't a bug in the system—it's the feature. "Targeted enforcement" was always about creating a surveillance infrastructure that could monitor and control entire populations while maintaining plausible deniability about its true scope.

The Chilling Effect: Mission Accomplished

Protecting Yourself in the Age of "Targeted" Surveillance

If "targeted enforcement" can target anyone, how do you protect yourself and your community? The key is understanding that you're not just protecting against immigration enforcement—you're protecting against a comprehensive surveillance apparatus.

Community Protection Strategies

• Know Your Rights: Understand Fourth Amendment protections and warrant requirements
• Document Everything: Record interactions with law enforcement (where legal)
• Support Sanctuary Policies: Advocate for policies limiting local cooperation with ICE
• Community Networks: Build mutual aid networks that don't rely on government services
• Legal Resources: Know your local immigration lawyers and rapid response networks

The Bottom Line: Targeted Became Total

"Targeted enforcement" was the Trojan horse that brought mass surveillance into American communities. What started as a promise to focus on "dangerous criminals" became a justification for monitoring everyone, criminalizing everything, and deporting anyone.

The lesson here isn't just about immigration policy—it's about how authoritarian programs expand through mission creep and technological capability. Give the government the tools to monitor "bad guys," and soon everyone becomes a potential target.

The next time politicians promise "targeted" anything—surveillance, enforcement, or "security"—remember that targets have a way of multiplying once the infrastructure is in place. Today's "gang member" is tomorrow's "traffic violator" is next week's "anyone we want to arrest."