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Alien Criminal Response Information Management System (ACRIMe)

Three ominous beings with surveillance cameras in place of heads appear to rise from a dark cloud. Office buildings reminiscent of F.B.I. headquarters rest on the cloud. Three mouths full of sharp teeth hover within the cloud.

Alien Criminal Response Information Management System (ACRIMe) is a web-based ICE data system used by contract analysts at ICE’s Law Enforcement Support Center (LESC) to access criminal legal and DHS databases in order to cross-reference a person whose immigration status is unknown.

ACRIMe allows ICE’s contract analysts and field officers to access some criminal legal and DHS sub-agency files, respond to immigration status queries, or tag targeted individuals in FBI and criminal law enforcement files for future “lookout.”Footnote 1 ACRIMe automatically searches for name and date of birth matches in various criminal, customs, and immigration databases.Footnote 2 In addition to government datasets, a person using ACRIMe can also choose to manually search other government and commercial databases.Footnote 3 Data fed into commercial data aggregators come from numerous government and other commercial databases.Footnote 4 These include real-time incarceration records (including booking photos), cell phone location and automated license plate reader data history, utility information from Equifax, and social media accounts.

ACRIMe allows ICE field officers to access the analyst’s research. Based on those searches, ICE’s data analyst decides whether ICE has the basis to issue a detainer or arrest you.

ACRIMe is used to prepare an Immigration Alien Response (IAR) that recommends to an ICE deportation officer whether you might be removable.Footnote 5 The IAR includes a person’s last known immigration or citizenship status, basic biographical information and criminal history. ACRIMe then electronically returns the IAR to both the requesting agency and the ICE ERO Field Office that is in the region of the requestor. If the analyst decides that a person might be deportable, then an ICE agent or officer can lodge a detainer via the ACRIMe system, and the IAR is routed to the local ICE field office which has jurisdiction.Footnote 6

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Jump back to text at footnote 1National Archives and Records Administration, “Request for Records Disposition Authority: Alien Criminal Response Information Management System (ACRIMe),” National Archives website (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, October 31, 2017), https://www.archives.gov/files/records-mgmt/rcs/schedules/departments/d….
Jump back to text at footnote 2U.S. Department of Homeland Security, “Alien Criminal Response Information Management System (ACRIMe),” April 22, 2010, 4, https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/privacy-pia-ice-02….
Jump back to text at footnote 3U.S. Department of Homeland Security, “Privacy Impact Assessment Update for the ACRIMe,” September 28, 2018, 16, https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/privacy-pia-ice-ac….
Jump back to text at footnote 4Dena Kozanas, U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) 2019 Data Mining Report to Congress, December 2, 2020, 36, https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/2019_data_mining_r….
Jump back to text at footnote 5According to the ACRIMe PIA from September 2018, “ICE has expanded the users of ACRIMe beyond the LESC to include ERO officers located at the Pacific Enforcement Response Center (PERC) as well as in ERO field offices and command centers across the country.” DHS, “PIA for ACRIMe,” September 28, 2018.
Jump back to text at footnote 6DHS, “PIA for ACRIMe,” September 28, 2018, 2.