New Episode: Are We Doing Tech Right? – The Immigrant Smartphone Dilemma
In this episode, ConnectSafely CEO Larry Magid speaks with Austin-based immigration attorney Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch about the surprising role smartphones play in the lives of migrants traveling through Mexico to the U.S.
Smartphones can be lifelines—connecting immigrants with loved ones, legal support, and critical resources. But they can also be tools of surveillance, exploitation, and even danger. From charging phones in border camps to being tracked and scammed online, Kate shares powerful stories from the frontlines of immigration law.
Together, they explore:
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How smartphones help and harm immigrants in transit and after arrival
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The role of social media in both empowerment and government monitoring
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Real-life scams targeting vulnerable migrants
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How cartels exploit phones to extort U.S. families
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The challenge of educating immigrant communities about tech safety
Tune in now to hear how technology is shaping the immigrant experience—for better and for worse—and what we can do about it.
Available on all major podcast platforms or right here:
Listen to “Crossing Borders: Legal Insights on Immigration and Technology” on Spreaker.
Transcript
Larry Magid: These days, just about everyone is online, and that includes immigrants, including people who are making that dangerous trek through Mexico to try to get to the U.S. Some make it to the country, some don’t. But just about all of them have smartphones. For those people who are trying to get into or stay in the country, a smartphone is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it’s an incredible resource that enables them to stay in touch with people, help them in any of their legal issues, and communicate with people back home and perhaps relatives here in the United States. But that smartphone in their pocket can also be used for surveillance, which can have negative consequences. So to find out more about this, I’m speaking today with Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, an immigration lawyer based in Austin, TX, who has worked extensively with immigrant communities. Kate, you must be very busy these days.
Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch: Yes, since January, I’ve probably given, I don’t know, 30 or 40 presentations to immigration community groups and have been able to see the sea change really, because it started with a lot of fear. But also we’re at the point where we’ve seen more federal courts step in.
Larry: Yeah.
Kate: And block some of these. So I’m, actually believe it or not, starting to feel a little bit more hopeful about that. If our checks and balances hold, maybe the judiciary will hold the line for us for the next four years.
Larry: I sure hope so, and my heart goes out to anybody who’s impacted by this. Some here legally, some undocumented, whatever their status is, they should be treated with dignity. As you know, the title of this podcast is Are We Doing Tech Right? and ConnectSafely is an Internet safety organization. But safety is a broad term, so let’s talk a little bit about technology and how it’s shaping the immigrant experience, both positively in terms of access to resources and communications tools, and negatively in terms of surveillance and misinformation.
Kate: We’re seeing a lot more detentions in the airport and a lot of this is because of surveillance access to criminal records. But most of these folks have not been arrested. They don’t have criminal history, so a lot of this information gathering on the part of DHS comes from checking people out online and seeing what their activities have been on social media. That’s now going to be part of immigration applications. What are your social media handles?
Larry: Let me ask you about that, because obviously whether you agree or disagree with anybody’s political position, we do have a First Amendment in this country, which certainly as far as American citizens are concerned, I’ve always assumed that I have a right to express essentially any opinion I want, and whether or not you agree with it, I have a right to do it. Does the First Amendment not apply to people who are here, potentially even undocumented people? Are they not protected by the First Amendment?
Kate: Well, I would have said constitutional protections attach to everyone in all places, with the exception of at the border. There’s this sort of Constitution-free zone along the border. But what we’re seeing challenged now is that concept exactly.
Larry: About how tech plays a role. So let’s talk first on the positive side. I presume that most recently many adult immigrants coming over the border do have smartphones. Is that an accurate assumption?
Kate: They do, yes.
Larry: And how do they get connectivity? Do they roam from the original country, are they buying SIM cards, or what are they doing? Because it’s complicated even for me. I’m about to go to Mexico as a tourist and I have to think about how I’m going to…
Kate: …get connectivity when I get down there. I don’t know what SIM cards they buy or what services they use, but the question reminds me—and I think I have a photo of this—of one of the encampments of refugees along the border, and it wasn’t a refugee camp in the sense that the Red Cross was there, or the UN was there supporting it. It was just a bunch of homeless refugees living in makeshift tents. And so they didn’t have things like electricity and running water and medical care and school. So a lot of these migrants would go and work for an entire day just to earn enough money to go to this charging area that somebody had set up, and they would plug their phones in. And I remember going and seeing it. And there was this bucket with cement in it and a big pole coming out of it and some outlets. And tons of phones plugged in. And these are people who went out and earned money in order to charge their smartphones. Wow. And I remember thinking, gosh, the things that we don’t even consider as something to make our lives work.
Larry: And that’s in addition to having to pay to get access to the service as well, which of course is sometimes very expensive. OK, so they have the phones, but what are they doing with them?
Kate: They are definitely using them to communicate with friends and relatives in the United States. If we’re talking about the migrants who are coming, let’s say from Venezuela, they’re crossing the Darien Gap, they’re going through Central America. Most of these folks know someone here in the United States, and they have their family back home. And so they’re updating everyone. This is a very dangerous journey. And so they’re telling people that they are still alive. And one of the things—another outcome of sending migrants back to Mexico—is that this is actually what has created more cartel violence along the southern border, because a lot of cartels would come and seize upon these opportunities to get these migrants, whom they all know have a phone. They all have a phone because they’re communicating with relatives. And so what they would do, these kidnappers, is they’ll grab a migrant and they’ll take their phone and they’ll call their relative in the United States and ask for a ransom. It’s usually about $5,000 a person—that’s the going rate. And so a lot of these migrants, they have to have phones, and it actually becomes the mechanism through which the cartels…
Larry: Mm-hmm.
Kate: …get their money for the…
Larry: So I was actually a victim in the sense that I didn’t fall for the scam, but of a virtual kidnapping when somebody claimed to have my wife, and there was about a half-hour period where I was a little in doubt. But it was purely a scam. They never had my wife. In this case, they actually have the people. This is a real kidnapping as opposed to just claiming that they’ve kidnapped someone.
Kate: Yes. And I have talked to hundreds of people who have been kidnapped. It’s very routine because we are allowing refugees to stay in dangerous areas.
Larry: Are we finding that phones are being used to disseminate dangerous misinformation? I mean, we all get misinformation, and maybe it causes us to vote the wrong way, but sometimes it can cause real serious personal…
Kate: Yes. And I would say that what I see most often in terms of disinformation is people either spreading rumors that aren’t true or people trying to convince a vulnerable community. So now moving into the immigration population inside of the United States, of course they know that there’s a lot happening right now and there are people who seize upon this vulnerability and this interest. And so you see a lot of reports going out: “Apply right now,” or I’ll have clients who—oh gosh, this has happened for me a couple of times—I’ve had people set up fake profiles of me, my photo and all my videos on any of the social media platforms, and then they’ll start messaging people: “This is your attorney, and if you don’t pay my bill, you’re going to get deported,” and they’ll threaten and take payment. Or people will—lots of times people will set up immigration paperwork agencies and sell services and take people’s money and never do anything for them, and it’s rampant, especially in times like these.
Larry: It’s interesting, what you’re describing. Everybody who has a phone or a computer understands scams—they’re all over the place. For the most part, I think people generally don’t fall for them, though enough people do. But in the immigrant community, and especially in this group of people who are so desperate to stay out of custody or get into the country, are they more vulnerable in terms of being targeted and also being tempted to succumb to them because they’re so…
Kate: Desperate. Absolutely, absolutely. They’re more vulnerable. There’s a language barrier often, there’s a technology barrier often, there’s the desperation, as you mentioned, the terror, and the hope, and the willingness to do anything to keep their family together.
Larry: How do you provide education about scams to a group of people? There’s so many issues—language barrier, mobility, terror. I know, for example, when I was approached by these virtual kidnappers, the sheer terror of it caused me to think less clearly than I normally think and went into a panic mode. And that’s not when I do my best decision-making.
Kate: That’s right. It’s difficult. It can be difficult to reach this population. It’s one of the things that I do on a daily basis, and I do a lot of live stream videos on Facebook and Instagram and TikTok, I do a newsletter, I do a weekly radio show. I do a bunch of know-your-rights presentations, but those have been more difficult to disseminate—these in-person events—because people are so afraid of enforcement actions, and now there’s no safe locations anymore. So it used to be that you could host an event at a church or a school or hospital, and those aren’t safe places anymore. So people aren’t showing up in person so much. So really the way to reach people is online, which is a catch-22, because if you’re working to inform them about scams online—I had this challenge when I was telling people, “Hey, there’s this fake TikTok profile. It looks exactly like me, has all my videos, and they’re going to message you and ask you for money.” But I’m here telling you this, this person in this account, that I’m the real person.
Larry: How do they know you’re the real person? Yeah.
Kate: That—that—that. It’s tricky business.
Larry: Yeah. No, it is one of the unfortunate things about scams, in addition to falling for scams, some of us fail to respond to legitimate ones. Actually, my wife almost didn’t get Social Security because she thought that these outreaches were scams. It turned out it really was Social Security trying to clarify some information so they could send her money. What about the use of technology in terms of exposing yourself? They’re at a higher risk. We always tell people to be careful what you post on social media because it could impact your reputation, it could somehow harm you. How does that affect immigrants who have far more worry than you and I do in terms of what can happen to us?
Kate: Yes, what people put online—all of us—we have to be thoughtful about it and it matters, and particularly so for immigration. So examples are, I do a lot of marriage-based green card cases where we’re proving that this is a good faith marriage, and often immigration will go in and check the social media accounts of both the U.S. citizen petitioner and the immigrant beneficiary, and they’ll make sure that they are—the wedding really occurred and they really live together and this is not just some made-up marriage. The same could be true for an asylum applicant. And then this is a new thing. But now that there’s this crackdown on free speech, of course, people’s support for certain organizations is being monitored on social media as well. There was another student who had just shared on her Facebook page some of the protest stuff supporting Palestine. She hadn’t said anything about Hamas or anything along those lines, and just because she had provided online support, their visa was revoked. And these are doctoral graduate students who have invested tons of money and time in their life and their future, and they come here and I think people don’t really think through—when someone gets that email revoking their visa—that means their whole career and life plan is completely upended.
Larry: You mentioned how the phones are being used to communicate. They seem they’re also being used to send money back home. Is that happening through various services and is that happening in ways that are fair? I know that some of these money transfer services are extremely expensive compared to what I use—PayPal—and it’s free, but I don’t know if you can do that if you’re just coming in from…
Kate: Well, I think that the remittances are still pretty in the past, so most of the people that I know are still going to the Western Union branch and sending payments. That—that’s the cheapest way to do it. But I could…
Larry: It’s not cheap. We had a person who needed some money in Mexico, and I sent her some and I was shocked at the percentage of my money that I sent that went to Western Union as opposed…
Kate: …to her. I think that’s still pretty much how it’s going. I could be wrong about that. But sending money through PayPal or Zelle is tough across borders.
Larry:
Kate, let’s talk about some of the challenges that you face as an immigration attorney using online services.
Kate: Definitely, right now during election season, I have to be so careful with my words on social media, and things that are innocuous will get flagged to be taken down. And even when I do my TikTok lives and I’m literally just answering people’s questions about immigration cases, I get these pop-ups that my comments are violating community standards. And so it can even just be words like deportation, immigration, visa—sometimes it’s words that you’re like, “What? How is this flagging it?” And so we’re constantly having to retool, reword posts until things are just like so vague, people don’t even actually really know what we’re talking about. Sometimes it can be pretty frustrating online in this era and trying to get out real information to people.
Larry: Kate, I very much appreciate it. I wish you the best in your work. And unlike most lawyers who I want to get more business because that’s good for their bottom line, I’d like you to see, get a lot less business going forward.
Kate: Yeah, some peace and quiet would be nice, wouldn’t it? Thank you for having me on, Larry.
Larry: Thanks so much, Kate.