{"id":84618,"date":"2026-10-15T20:17:31","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T03:17:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=84618"},"modified":"2026-10-15T20:17:31","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T03:17:31","slug":"a-former-tps-holder-navigates-san-franciscos-matrix-of-surveillance-cameras","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=84618","title":{"rendered":"A Former TPS Holder Navigates San Francisco\u2019s Matrix of Surveillance Cameras"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By<\/span>Julieth Gualtero Baquero<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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SAN FRANCISCO<\/strong> \u2013 Anxiety has been the defining hallmark of life for Samir since he lost Temporary Protected Status (TPS) in 2025. The 32-year-old Venezuelan now finds himself adrift in a legal limbo, stripped of his livelihood and with no clear path ahead.<\/p>\n

Adding to his fears, he says, is the explosion of surveillance cameras across San Francisco and nationwide, fueling a pervasive sense of his own vulnerability.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom the moment I step outside the door, I look forward, I look back, I look in every direction constantly,\u201d said Samir (who asked that we not use his real name). \u201cAnything looks suspicious to me. It\u2019s paranoia. You end up feeling like a criminal without having done anything wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

That sentiment is part of what is behind the growing public backlash<\/a> against the government\u2019s expanding surveillance capacity, one now being deployed as part of the Trump Administration\u2019s ongoing anti-immigrant crackdown.<\/p>\n

\u2018Like Amazon, but with human beings\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n

There are, according to estimates, between 70 and 80 million surveillance cameras installed across the country, or roughly 1 camera for every 4 to 4.5 residents. Among these are some 120,000 Flock Automatic License Plate Readers (ALPRs) deployed across roads and highways nationwide.<\/p>\n

The rapid spread of these \u201cpublic safety\u201d tools is raising alarm bells among privacy and civil rights advocates as well as immigrant rights defenders.<\/p>\n

\u201cImmigration enforcement and \u2018national security\u2019 have long served as the justification for increasingly authoritarian systems that erode civil liberties [and] weaken democratic protections,\u201d write the authors of a recent report, The Tech Behind ICE: Oligarchs, Immigration Enforcement and the Threat to Democracy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In turning to expanded tech-driven surveillance, the administration\u2019s vision, the authors note, quoting former ICE Acting Dir. Todd Lyons, is to create a deportation process \u201clike [Amazon] Prime, but with human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018We can\u2019t keep you\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Samir first left his native Caracas in 2017, a year marked by massive protests, a brutal crackdown by former Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro and the first in a series of crippling sanctions imposed on the South American nation by the US.<\/p>\n

A musician by training, Samir initially fled to Mexico, where he would spend the next three years eking out a living as a teacher in a local music school. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and his life was once again turned upside down.<\/p>\n

Unemployed and unsure of where to turn, Samir decided to head to the US. He secured a tourist visa, giving him entry into the country, and boarded a plane to San Francisco, where a friend lived, in December of 2020. In March of the following year, he applied for and was eventually granted TPS, reserved for individuals fleeing countries shaken by violence, political persecution or natural disasters.<\/p>\n

Now able to work legally, Samir returned to music, landing gigs teaching guitar, piano, music theory, and improvisation at Bay Area music schools. He also found a position with the stagehands union, Local 16, working shows around San Francisco.<\/p>\n

But events would once again upend Samir\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

In October 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court green lighted the Trump Administration\u2019s efforts to end TPS protections for Venezuelans. The ruling, and subsequent decisions, have led to the cancellation of TPS<\/a> status for 13 countries to date, impacting some 1.3 million people across the country.<\/p>\n

For Samir, the loss of TPS set off a chain of events that like dominoes fell one after another, taking apart the life he had painstakingly sought to build here.<\/p>\n

\u201cI notified all the schools and the union employer that I had lost my TPS,\u201d recalled Samir, noting that without the legal designation he no longer had work authorization. \u201cThey all told me, \u2018Please let us know how we can help you, and if anything changes, please come back\u2026 but without a work permit, we can\u2019t keep you.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

A \u2018digital pipeline for deportations<\/strong>\u2018<\/h2>\n

Along with his employment status, Samir also lost his health insurance and,\u00a0because he no longer had a valid Social Security Number, his bank shuttered his accounts. He then got a notice from the California DMV alerting him that his state issued ID was no longer valid.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was all I had, that was my only current, valid identification,\u201d said Samir. \u201cAll my IDs are expired. I don\u2019t have anything from Venezuela, I don\u2019t have anything from Mexico, and I don\u2019t have a passport because there is no [Venezuelan] embassy here.\u201d<\/p>\n

These days Samir relies on friends across the Bay Area for shelter and part-time gigs, including cataloging and archiving vinyl records for local collectors.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it weren\u2019t for the help of all these people\u2026\u201d he pauses, catches his breath, at a loss for words, before continuing. \u201cI have felt sort of protected, helped, loved, and accompanied.\u201d<\/p>\n

And while he admits he thinks of leaving, that option carries its own set of complications.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only way I could leave is by driving down to the border and crossing into Mexico,\u201d said Samir, \u201c[which] can\u2019t issue me a passport because I\u2019m not a citizen there, and without a passport, I can\u2019t fly anywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Like Venezuela all over again\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n

In the meantime, Samir spends his days navigating the matrix of cameras and surveillance tools that have proliferated across San Francisco, a system he describes as a digital pipeline for deportations.<\/p>\n

In late September, the city announced it would continue to deploy the cameras<\/a> with certain limits, including who can access the data and for how long it will be stored. Reporting by 404 Media found that more than 4,000 queries<\/a> carried out across ALPR networks were explicitly tagged with terms like \u201cICE,\u201d \u201cimmigration,\u201d or \u201cICE+ERO,\u201d that latter referring to Enforcement and Removal Operations.<\/p>\n

In Samir\u2019s telling, it \u201cfeels like watching Venezuela all over again.\u201d<\/p>\n

He explained, \u201cIn Caracas, when state repression began, many looked the other way, thinking danger only threatened street protesters or active dissidents.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pointing to conditions here, he added, \u201cToday, people say, \u2018It\u2019s just the immigrants, it\u2019s just undocumented people.\u2019 But that\u2019s an illusion. When you hand the state the power to monitor, track, and categorize a group of people without limits or oversight, you hand it control over the entire society.\u201d<\/p>\n

This story was produced as part of \u201cAqu\u00ed Estamos\/Here We Stand<\/a>,\u201d a collaborative reporting project of American Community Media and community news outlets statewide.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ByJulieth Gualtero Baquero Oct 15, 2026...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ca-local"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=84618"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84619,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84618\/revisions\/84619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=84618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=84618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=84618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}