ICE's Use Of Data Brokers Raises Suppression Questions

On Thursday, June 22, 2006, Elaine N. Lammert, deputy general counsel for the FBI's investigative law branch, told Congress that "There are compelling reasons for the government to believe that these operations [meaning data brokers] violate federal law." Therefore, there's an argument that using data brokers may violate the 4th Amendment by obtaining and using evidence that there are compelling reasons to believe were illegally obtained.

Paul Kilcoyne, a senior official with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said that at least four agents in Denver asked data brokers for information, but ICE's internal investigation concluded that they had not acted improperly.

Filing a motion to suppress and asking the government for any documents about whether they used data brokers or any third-party sources for data would allow an independent court the opportunity to review whether ICE is acting properly. There is a strong argument that the US Constitution should allow people to have a court review ICE's actions, not simply to trust ICE to investigate itself. See Ted Bridis's article titled "FBI: Data Brokers Probably Act Illegally," June 22, 2006, Associated Press.