Tools and Weapons: The Promise and the Peril of the Digital Age

by Brad Smith

They explained that the Customs and Border Protection personnel used a computer system with a drop-down menu when people initially crossed the border. Agents would classify someone either as an unaccompanied minor, an individual adult, or an adult with children, meaning a family unit. When children subsequently were separated from their parents, the computer system’s design forced agents to go back and change this designation, for example by inputting a child’s name as an unaccompanied minor and the parent’s name as an individual adult. Critically, this overwrote the prior data, meaning the system no longer retained the family designation that previously had listed everyone together. As a result, the government no longer had any record that connected family members. This was not only a story about immigration and families. It was also a story about technology. The government was using a structured database that worked for one process but not for another. Rather than update the IT system to support the new steps involved in separating families, the administration had plunged ahead without thinking about the computer architecture that would be needed. Having seen CBP’s systems at a command center near the Mexican border on a visit with Wendy just months before, I was not surprised that its systems were antiquated. But I was still horrified that the administration had failed to think about the implications of what it needed in terms of basic technology infrastructure.