CT woman gets Homeland Security email to leave country despite being a US citizen

ThatRobGuy said:

I'm surprised that the CPB One app didn't have 2-step email verification. That's pretty much the standard even for less critical non-governmental systems that rely on push/email/sms notifications.

Click to expand...

...and knowing that weakness, I'm surprised the government chose to use those email addresses, or even email at all, to deliver the "it's time for you to leave".

I would consider such email to suspect or even fraudulent.

RDKirk said:

Back during the Cold War, I used to think only commie countries did that.

Click to expand...

We learned from the best.

essentialsaltes said:

“After I contacted Sen. Baldwin’s office, they were working [on] it right away,” Frantz said. “I felt like I had an advocate, somebody who really understood my situation and knew the inner workings of government to try to address it.”

Click to expand...

Tammy Baldwin really needs to stop with this kind of rhetoric (mentioned in the article)

“This is completely illegal — President Trump is trying to deport an American-born, law-abiding citizen and has provided absolutely no justification,” Baldwin said in a statement. “The President cannot kick Americans out of the country just because he wants — no one is above the law, including the President.”

She's going to have some egg on her face once it becomes abundantly clear that no Americans were actually in danger of being deported simply because an undocumented migrant used an email address that wasn't their own in the "notification settings" of the CPB One app back in 2023.

But I suspect she already knows this...and simply isn't bothered by the notion of creating unnecessary panic so long as it allows her to take a cheap shot at a political rival.

ThatRobGuy said:

Tammy Baldwin really needs to stop with this kind of rhetoric (mentioned in the article)

“This is completely illegal — President Trump is trying to deport an American-born, law-abiding citizen and has provided absolutely no justification,” Baldwin said in a statement. “The President cannot kick Americans out of the country just because he wants — no one is above the law, including the President.”

She's going to have some egg on her face once it becomes abundantly clear that no Americans were actually in danger of being deported simply because an undocumented migrant used an email address that wasn't their own in the "notification settings" of the CPB One app back in 2023.

But I suspect she already knows this...and simply isn't bothered by the notion of creating unnecessary panic so long as it allows her to take a cheap shot at a political rival.

Click to expand...

I don’t think it’s necessarily a cheap shot when this administration has publicly floated the notion of deporting citizens, is notoriously disorganized and prone to administrative errors, has already issued an ICE hold for at least one citizen, and is currently thumbing their nose at court orders to facilitate the return of someone who was deported in error.

iluvatar5150 said:

I don’t think it’s necessarily a cheap shot when this administration has publicly floated the notion of deporting citizens, is notoriously disorganized and prone to administrative errors, has already issued an ICE hold for at least one citizen, and is currently thumbing their nose at court orders to facilitate the return of someone who was deported in error.

Click to expand...

It's a cheap shot when Sen. Baldwin knows that the Trump admin isn't trying to just randomly deport any US citizens.

There are plenty of legitimate criticisms to make about how Trump is handling deportations without having to fabricate some contrived "Pepe Silvia" logic for why a Biden-era app design flaw is somehow evidence of Trump trying to randomly deport US-born citizens.

I was listening to an interview with Chris Cuomo recently, and he referred to that as the democrats' bad habit of "trying to cheat and stack the deck when you've already got a winning hand"...very little to gain and a lot to lose. As it currently stands, Democrats already have a solid case with regards to Trump ignoring a 9-0 scotus ruling. Maybe push that angle for more than a week before attempting to fabricate scare tactics.

I would say it could be a good time to file articles of impeachment (certainly they'd be able to find some republicans in the legislative branch who would take umbrage with the fact that Trump is basically going against Clearance Thomas on this one -- which is saying something -- if there was any minute sliver of a reason to side with Trump on that, Thomas would've done it and dissented. Maybe pursue that avenue a little more.


And when you consider how reckless that particular scaremongering is, it's irresponsible on her part.

If you look at what people are doing in response to this, they're going into pocket, hiring expensive immigration attorneys, rushing out and obtaining passports, etc...


What she should be doing is issuing a "don't panic, it's just a case where a migrant probably found your email address online, and used that to try to conceal their tracks, nobody's getting deported based on email address alone"

ICE uses photographs and biometric information to as a means of confirming the person they're looking for.

What? Do people think it's a situation of:
"we're looking for a 23-year-old Guatemalan guy named Francisco Jiménez, he's 5' 6", 147lbs, dark hair, with a green tattoo on his neck"

And then knock on this guy's door (he's the one from the article that was linked)


And say: "your email address matches the description, we're deporting you"

That's the impression Tammy Baldwin and a few media outlets seem to be trying to give people.

ThatRobGuy said:

It's a cheap shot when Sen. Baldwin knows that the Trump admin isn't trying to just randomly deport any US citizens.

And when you consider how reckless that particular scaremongering is, it's irresponsible on her part.

If you look at what people are doing in response to this, they're going into pocket, hiring expensive immigration attorneys, rushing out and obtaining passports, etc...


What she should be doing is issuing a "don't panic, it's just a case where a migrant probably found your email address online, and used that to try to conceal their tracks, nobody's getting deported based on email address alone"

ICE uses photographs and biometric information to as a means of confirming the person they're looking for.

What? Do people think it's a situation of:
"we're looking for a 23-year-old Guatemalan guy named Francisco Jiménez, he's 5' 6", 147lbs, dark hair, with a green tattoo on his neck"

And then knock on this guy's door (he's the one from the article that was linked)
View attachment 363802

And say: "your email address matches the description, we're deporting you"

That's the impression Tammy Baldwin and a few media outlets seem to be trying to give people.

Click to expand...

Again, he’s floated the idea of deporting citizens, and he’s actively flouting efforts to correct mistakes. They issued an ICE hold on a citizen who was arrested for a suspended law.

Eight years ago, I would have agreed with you. For eight years, I’ve been trying to avoid getting on board with the hand wringers, but all along the way, I’ve been consistently proven wrong. He tried to steal an election four years ago. The guy clearly does not care anymore and is daring people to stop him from doing whatever he wants.

iluvatar5150 said:

Again, he’s floated the idea of deporting citizens, and he’s actively flouting efforts to correct mistakes. They issued an ICE hold on a citizen who was arrested for a suspended law.

Eight years ago, I would have agreed with you. For eight years, I’ve been trying to avoid getting on board with the hand wringers, but all along the way, I’ve been consistently proven wrong. He tried to steal an election four years ago. The guy clearly does not care anymore and is daring people to stop him from doing whatever he wants.

Click to expand...

To be clear, he floated the idea of sending violent criminals (who'd already been convicted or were already incarcerated) to CECOT

The proposal was never just "grab a random US citizen of the street and send them to El Salvador tomorrow"

Just for clarification, I don't agree with that plan either, but we shouldn't exaggerate what the idea actually was.


Is Tammy Baldwin going to reimburse people for their legal fees for the immigration attorneys they hired over receiving an email that didn't actually apply to them?

ThatRobGuy said:

To be clear, he floated the idea of sending violent criminals (who'd already been convicted or were already incarcerated) to CECOT

The proposal was never just "grab a random US citizen of the street and send them to El Salvador tomorrow"

Just for clarification, I don't agree with that plan either, but we shouldn't exaggerate what the idea actually was.

Click to expand...

It doesn’t matter what the plan is when they’re also exercising an extreme lack of care in executing the plan and a lack of interest in owning up to their mistakes.

iluvatar5150 said:

It doesn’t matter what the plan is when they’re also exercising an extreme lack of care in executing the plan and a lack of interest in owning up to their mistakes.

Click to expand...

To be blunt, the reason people are getting these emails is because of a lack of care on the part of the Biden administration when they decided to try to rush out a plan to take, what was supposed to be a glorified trucking logistics & scheduling app, and turn it into the primary system for asylum application for the US.


It was a bad idea to shoehorn that new (very different) use case into that particular existing app, and an even worse idea to try to do it within an 8-week timeline.

It's completely within Trump's purview to use a government-sourced dataset as a means of enforcing immigration policy, it's not his fault if the previous administration's oversights left his team with a flawed/un-sanitized dataset to work with.



The US government would actually do well to add a new cabinet position. A handful of other developed nations have a "Secretary/Minister of Technology" position that would've come in handy in situations like this.

ThatRobGuy said:

It's a cheap shot when Sen. Baldwin knows that the Trump admin isn't trying to just randomly deport any US citizens.

There are plenty of legitimate criticisms to make about how Trump is handling deportations without having to fabricate some contrived "Pepe Silvia" logic for why a Biden-era app design flaw is somehow evidence of Trump trying to randomly deport US-born citizens.

I was listening to an interview with Chris Cuomo recently, and he referred to that as the democrats' bad habit of "trying to cheat and stack the deck when you've already got a winning hand"...very little to gain and a lot to lose. As it currently stands, Democrats already have a solid case with regards to Trump ignoring a 9-0 scotus ruling. Maybe push that angle for more than a week before attempting to fabricate scare tactics.

I would say it could be a good time to file articles of impeachment (certainly they'd be able to find some republicans in the legislative branch who would take umbrage with the fact that Trump is basically going against Clearance Thomas on this one -- which is saying something -- if there was any minute sliver of a reason to side with Trump on that, Thomas would've done it and dissented. Maybe pursue that avenue a little more.


And when you consider how reckless that particular scaremongering is, it's irresponsible on her part.

If you look at what people are doing in response to this, they're going into pocket, hiring expensive immigration attorneys, rushing out and obtaining passports, etc...


What she should be doing is issuing a "don't panic, it's just a case where a migrant probably found your email address online, and used that to try to conceal their tracks, nobody's getting deported based on email address alone"

ICE uses photographs and biometric information to as a means of confirming the person they're looking for.

What? Do people think it's a situation of:
"we're looking for a 23-year-old Guatemalan guy named Francisco Jiménez, he's 5' 6", 147lbs, dark hair, with a green tattoo on his neck"

And then knock on this guy's door (he's the one from the article that was linked)
View attachment 363802

And say: "your email address matches the description, we're deporting you"

That's the impression Tammy Baldwin and a few media outlets seem to be trying to give people.

Click to expand...

I would advise any citizen if they look even half Hispanic to spend the money to at least get a passport and have it on them for the remainder of this presidency. Having been born in this country is no longer any guarantee you won’t be sent to a prison in El Salvador without even a court hearing. That’s not telling people to panic, it’s telling them to be aware and take precaution.

ThatRobGuy said:

To be blunt, the reason people are getting these emails is because of a lack of care on the part of the Biden administration when they decided to try to rush out a plan to take, what was supposed to be a glorified trucking logistics & scheduling app, and turn it into the primary system for asylum application for the US.

Click to expand...

You don’t know why they’re getting them. Unless you’ve seen these emails and the associated app records, you’re just speculating. At least one of the recipients said that she initially thought it was merely an email mixup like you’ve described, but that her name was the only one in the email, so it appeared to be more directed than that.

ThatRobGuy said:

It was a bad idea to shoehorn that new (very different) use case into that particular existing app, and an even worse idea to try to do it within an 8-week timeline.

The US government would actually do well to add a new cabinet position. A handful of other developed nations have a "Secretary/Minister of Technology" position that would've come in handy in situations like this.

Click to expand...

We had a digital office to do something like that and Trump handed it over to Elon Musk.

iluvatar5150 said:

You don’t know why they’re getting them. Unless you’ve seen these emails and the associated app records, you’re just speculating. At least one of the recipients said that she initially thought it was merely an email mixup like you’ve described, but that her name was the only one in the email, so it appeared to be more directed than that.

Click to expand...

CBP and immigration attorneys have already stated that's why people are getting them.

However, even without their statements on the matter, logically we can determine that much.

How else would their email have been added to the list?

For the record, I do know which service the government uses for sending out bulk emails

It's a service called SendGrid (an offering by a company named Twilio) -- some departments use Amazon SES as a backup, but they're functionally equivalent.

One of the features of such services, is to be able to make a high-confidence guess as what the first name is based on the email address.

For example, if someone had an email address of Mitchell . Smith @ yahoo.com, both services would return a high confidence match to determine the first and last names for tag replacements in the email template via some CLU/NLU model. If it can't interpret a match that meets the confidence threshold, the fields are simply left blank.

For example, here's a screenshot of the email received by an attorney in Columbus.





If you'll notice, no first name in this one. (it's because the email address was their NT username which was just the first two letters of their first name + 3 numbers, so it wasn't able to determine a high-confidence match.

GoldenBoy89 said:

I would advise any citizen if they look even half Hispanic to spend the money to at least get a passport and have it on them for the remainder of this presidency. Having been born in this country is no longer any guarantee you won’t be sent to a prison in El Salvador without even a court hearing. That’s not telling people to panic, it’s telling them to be aware and take precaution.

Click to expand...

So, their fingerprints and picture are going to match that of a person who fraudulently use their email address to sign up?

ThatRobGuy said:

CBP and immigration attorneys have already stated that's why people are getting them.

However, even without their statements on the matter, logically we can determine that much.

How else would their email have been added to the list?

For the record, I do know which service the government uses for sending out bulk emails

It's a service called SendGrid (an offering by a company named Twilio) -- some departments use Amazon SES as a backup, but they're functionally equivalent.

One of the features of such services, is to be able to make a high-confidence guess as what the first name is based on the email address.

For example, if someone had an email address of Mitchell . Smith @ yahoo.com, both services would return a high confidence match to determine the first and last names for tag replacements in the email template via some CLU/NLU model. If it can't interpret a match that meets the confidence threshold, the fields are simply left blank.

For example, here's a screenshot of the email received by an attorney in Columbus.

View attachment 363804



If you'll notice, no first name in this one. (it's because the email address was their NT username which was just the first two letters of their first name + 3 numbers, so it wasn't able to determine a high-confidence match.

Click to expand...

Fair enough, but to your earlier statement:

It's completely within Trump's purview to use a government-sourced dataset as a means of enforcing immigration policy, it's not his fault if the previous administration's oversights left his team with a flawed/un-sanitized dataset to work with.

Click to expand...

It IS their fault for failing to sanitize that data any further when issuing these letters.

iluvatar5150 said:

It IS their fault for failing to sanitize that data any further when issuing these letters.

Click to expand...

I don't see how they would...

That'd be like saying:

"Do a pre-scrub on this batch of orders to remove all orders that were submitted with stolen credit cards"

In most cases, you're not going to know there's any issue until you do the auth, and the person reports a fraudulent transaction.

Trying to detect "who's using a bogus email that actually belongs to someone else" is going to be even more difficult. As a lot of personal email addresses don't actually have any personally identifying information, and for the ones that do, it's not going to be with a level of specificity that can narrow it down to a single person.

For example, someone with a "LovesToGarden @ gmail" doesn't, by itself, throw up any red flags.

And "Charles.Jones444 @ outlook" may tell you that it's a person named Charles Jones, but there are probably 10,000 people in the US named Charles Jones.


Trying to establish any actual red flags would be a hugely labor-intensive effort that would require subpoenaing records from the various email providers like "Hey, this migrant used this email address, however Google records indicate that this email account has been being used/accessed by someone in Wisconsin for the last 8 years, so this seems fishy".


It seems like people are setting the standard of perfection on a bulk email process as a means of suggesting that he shouldn't be pursuing a deportation agenda.

ThatRobGuy said:

I don't see how they would...

That'd be like saying:

"Do a pre-scrub on this batch of orders to remove all orders that were submitted with stolen credit cards"

In most cases, you're not going to know there's any issue until you do the auth, and the person reports a fraudulent transaction.

Click to expand...

The email you posted didn’t even have a name in it. One would think that a minimum amount of care for something as serious as a deportation order would include making sure you actually name the person you’re wanting to deport.

ThatRobGuy said:

It seems like people are setting the standard of perfection on a bulk email process as a means of suggesting that he shouldn't be pursuing a deportation agenda.

Click to expand...

Maybe don’t do deportations via automatically generated form letters.

ThatRobGuy said:

Tammy Baldwin really needs to stop with this kind of rhetoric (mentioned in the article)

Click to expand...

This Baldwin scandal is just a little nothing in the context of what's going on here.

But I appreciate how we need to find something, anything, that could help us both-sides this situation.

durangodawood said:

This Baldwin scandal is just a little nothing in the context of what's going on here.

But I appreciate how we need to find something, anything, that could help us both-sides this situation.

Click to expand...

Nah, it's not both sidesing...

I'm accusing her of making a bad situation worse. (I wasn't the one who linked the article with her statements, it was someone else who introduced that into the mix, which makes it fair game for critiquing)

Baldwin is creating a level of panic that's going to cause people to waste a bunch of money, potentially miss work to go meet with lawyers, and get people all bent out of shape when they don't need to be.


If an email mistakenly went out about a food recall, and we knew it wasn't applicable. What's the best move?

"Alright folks, it was a clerical error, unless you bought this particular brand of shrimp from this particular Kroger location, you're not impacted, just ignore the email"
or
"Kroger is trying to poison everyone!, throw everything away that's in your fridge that you bought from any Kroger location!", thereby causing a bunch of people to throw away a bunch of food, and get paranoid -- simply because I had an axe to grind with a particular grocery store chain?

ThatRobGuy said:

Nah, it's not both sidesing...

I'm accusing her of making a bad situation worse. (I wasn't the one who linked the article with her statements, it was someone else who introduced that into the mix, which makes it fair game for critiquing)

Baldwin is creating a level of panic that's going to cause people to waste a bunch of money, potentially miss work to go meet with lawyers, and get people all bent out of shape when they don't need to be.


If an email mistakenly went out about a food recall, and we knew it wasn't applicable. What's the best move?

"Alright folks, it was a clerical error, unless you bought this particular brand of shrimp from this particular Kroger location, you're not impacted, just ignore the email"
or
"Kroger is trying to poison everyone!, throw everything away that's in your fridge that you bought from any Kroger location!", thereby causing a bunch of people to throw away a bunch of food, and get paranoid -- simply because I had an axe to grind with a particular grocery store chain?

Click to expand...

Consider that we have an exec branch that flat out refuses to correct an admitted and consequential error in this arena. The mistake can become the policy in this way, at the administrations discretion. So she's got a point.