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For years, Arizona<\/span> Attorney General Kris Mayes defended<\/a> the Transaction Record Analysis Center, a secretive financial surveillance program that tracks wire transfers between the U.S. and Mexico sent via Western Union and other companies. As recently as April, in response to The Intercept\u2019s reporting, her office brushed off fears that the Trump administration might use TRAC data to hit its deportation quotas.<\/p>\n \u201cTo our understanding there is nothing in the data TRAC collects that provides information on an individual\u2019s immigration status,\u201d said Mayes\u2019s spokesperson, Richie Taylor, in an email in April, \u201cand TRAC data is used exclusively for money laundering investigations.\u201d<\/p>\n But earlier this summer, after The Intercept filed a public records lawsuit<\/a> for documents about TRAC, Mayes took steps to limit Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents\u2019 access to the database, her office disclosed to The Intercept.<\/p>\n As of late June, agents from ICE\u2019s Enforcement and Removal Operations, or ERO, wing have been \u201cde-platformed,\u201d Mayes said in an emailed statement, and her office has \u201cbarred usage by agents and officials in these agencies for misuse of the data.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI continue to support the use of this data to assist law enforcement in our mission of defeating transnational drug cartels,\u201d Mayes said, \u201cbut this data is not and has never been intended to be used for immigration purposes.\u201d<\/p>\n Taylor attributed the change in Mayes\u2019s stance to her increasing concern \u201cabout the unconstitutional actions of the Trump administration over the last several months.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe Attorney General\u2019s Office is working on additional restrictions to safeguard the use of the data,\u201d Taylor said. \u201cAnd if there are any additional instances of misuse of the data, Attorney General Mayes is prepared to deplatform and ban additional agencies from using the database.\u201d<\/p>\n Mayes\u2019s office acknowledged the shift in policy in response to questions from The Intercept about two instances this year in which agents from Homeland Security Investigations, ICE\u2019s intelligence wing, used TRAC data to locate noncitizens for deportation who were not accused of any crime aside from unauthorized presence in the country. In recent months, thousands of HSI agents have been diverted<\/a> to support ERO in removal operations.<\/p>\n The American Civil Liberties Union told The Intercept that Mayes was \u201cright to recognize the extraordinary harm that will flow from feeding this highly sensitive and revealing data to the federal government\u2019s indiscriminate mass deportation machine,\u201d but that her belated steps to rein in certain ICE agents\u2019 access were not enough.<\/p>\n \u201cThe only way to durably protect our communities is to shut this database down.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n \u201cCutting off ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations agents still leaves access for the thousands of agents in ICE Homeland Security Investigations who have been unleashed by this administration to pursue civil immigration deportation efforts,\u201d said Nathan Freed Wessler,\u00a0deputy director of the ACLU\u2019s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project in an email. \u201cThe only way to durably protect our communities is to shut this database down.\u201d<\/p>\n At a bare minimum, Wessler added, \u201cArizona must require law enforcement agents to submit valid legal process, such as a warrant, identifying the non-immigration-related basis for the search.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThese limited measures are insufficient to address the danger TRAC presents,\u201d said Daniel Werner, a senior staff attorney with Just Futures Law, whose clients tried to challenge TRAC in federal court, in an emailed statement. \u201cEven with these measures in place, the TRAC database could still be used to carry out deportations and continues to facilitate mass surveillance without individualized suspicion or court oversight.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Leadership at TRAC, which was organized as a nonprofit by Mayes\u2019s predecessor in 2014, has long dismissed concerns. TRAC\u2019s president, Rich Lebel, wrote in an emailed statement in April that under TRAC\u2019s \u201cvery clear data use policy,\u201d the database \u201cis to be utilized for money laundering investigation purposes.\u201d<\/p>\n Previously, Lebel pointed to technical measures TRAC had taken to guard against potential misuses, including \u201cdata tokenization\u201d and \u201croutine monitoring of the system by TRAC personnel.\u201d Under an agreement<\/a>\u00a0Mayes\u2019s office signed with TRAC in 2023, users were required to promise not to abuse their access and declare the \u201cunderlying predicate offense\u201d for a given query.<\/p>\n But until recently, TRAC users could select \u201csomething else\u201d as the predicate offense, Mayes\u2019s office told The Intercept. This option has been removed, and TRAC users must now select a specific racketeering offense as defined under Arizona state law.<\/p>\n \u201cAs long as law enforcement agents are allowed to run searches justified only by a selection from a drop-down menu, there will be abuse,\u201d the ACLU\u2019s Wessler said.<\/p>\n \u201cAs long as law enforcement agents are allowed to run searches justified only by a selection from a drop-down menu, there will be abuse.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Lebel did not respond to The Intercept\u2019s questions about why such a catchall category was available to TRAC users in the first place.<\/p>\n According to Mayes\u2019s office, TRAC has sent emails to the hundreds of law enforcement agencies across the country with access to the database, \u201creminding users that TRAC data must be utilized for specific money laundering purposes, and unlawfully being present in the country is not an acceptable predicate offense.\u201d TRAC also put a notice to this effect on the database home page.<\/p>\n \u201cThe AG\u2019s Office is working with TRAC to implement additional restrictions to prevent the database from being used for immigration purposes,\u201d Taylor, the spokesperson, wrote.<\/p>\n The Intercept and<\/span> other outlets have identified two instances this year in which HSI agents apparently used TRAC data to identify and locate a noncitizen for deportation. In both instances, the agents searched wire transfer data before TRAC implemented the additional query restrictions in late June.<\/p>\n In one case, an HSI agent in Hawaii described<\/a> how she used \u201cinformation from a money remittance company\u201d to track down a Mexican man, based on 11 instances when he sent \u201cindividual remittances to individuals located in Mexico\u201d between October 2021 and May 2025. The case was first reported by Honolulu\u00a0Civil Beat<\/a>.<\/p>\n The agent\u2019s target, Gregorio Cordova Murrieta, had no criminal history and was not accused of money laundering or the other grave crimes used to justify TRAC. He was indicted on a single count of reentering the country without authorization after having been previously deported to Mexico.<\/p>\n This week, Cordova Murrieta was sentenced<\/a> to time served after spending 76 days at a federal detention center in Honolulu. He will remain behind bars as he awaits deportation, according to Civil Beat.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n
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