A U.S. senator recently revealed that for years, Immigration and Customs Enforcement secretly spied on wire transfers of more than $500 to or from California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Mexico without probable cause or a warrant.
Now a group of immigrants who say their remittances to family abroad were caught up in that massive warrantless dragnet is suing the government and the wire-transfer behemoth Western Union, which provided money transfer records.
Among the allegations: Law enforcement officials bragged in a PowerPoint presentation that they had tracked "suspicious" money transfers from people with "Middle Eastern names" or "Middle Eastern/Arabic names."
