The Transportation Security Administration is engaging in covert surveillance of innocent fliers — and raising a host of disturbing questions in the process.

Internal TSA documents uncovered by The Boston Globe reveal that under a program called “Quiet Skies,” every day federal air marshals are tracking and shadowing dozens of U.S. citizens who are not under investigation or suspected of any actual wrongdoing. We aim to find out more by filing a Freedom of Information Act request with the Trump administration.

The documents show that the TSA is using secret criteria that include travel patterns and specific behaviors to determine which travelers to target. The marshals then secretly follow the passengers and document their conduct in granular detail, going so far as to fly with them on subsequent flights. The agency retains the marshals’ observations and reports in its internal files.

The red flags here are plentiful. First, federal law enforcement shouldn’t be tracking and monitoring travelers and then logging detailed information about them without any basis to believe that they’ve done anything wrong. That the TSA appears to be doing exactly that through the Quiet Skies program is at once troubling and illogical — it needlessly invades the privacy of thousands of Americans while flooding the agency’s databases with useless information on innocent activity.

This program also raises serious constitutional concerns. If the TSA’s secret targeting criteria rely on race or religion, it could amount to unconstitutional profiling.

The TSA appears to be using algorithms to decide who to target, which only aggravates these concerns. This is a problem because such artificial intelligence incorporates human biases and often operates without adequate oversight and accountability. We’ve called out the agency in the past for using a targeting algorithm to sort passengers according to the purported risk they pose because it’s at odds with fairness and due process.

Finally, the TSA refuses to learn its lesson on roundly discredited “behavior detection” techniques, which Quiet Skies also uses. While spying on passengers, air marshals note whether they exhibit any of a series of behaviors — “excessive fidgeting,” “exaggerated emotions,” or a “cold penetrating stare,” to name a few — that the TSA insists on viewing as suspicious. In reality, they are subjective, often commonplace, and can easily be skewed by marshals’ biases.

Experts, legislators, and the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general have sharply criticized these methods. TSA documents that the ACLU obtained through a lawsuit revealed that the “behavior detection” techniques were unscientific and unreliable. Their use in Quiet Skies or any other TSA program is unacceptable.

Like the old, debunked “behavior detection” program, Quiet Skies looks like the worst kind of waste. It expends the time and focus of federal officers while at the same time threatening our civil liberties. The Globe reports that numerous federal air marshals have complained about the program, with one calling it “nonsense,” and in a very unusual move, the Air Marshal Association criticized it publicly.

From what we know about the TSA’s secret surveillance program, it’s a bad idea. Now we need to know much more about how Quiet Skies works in order to make sure that the TSA is respecting the Constitution and Americans’ rights. 

The July 26 deadline for the federal government to reunite thousands of separated children with their parents is three days away.

Here’s what you need to know about where the reunification process stands.

How many children have been reunited?

On July 23, the Trump administration told the court that it had reunited or 'appropriately discharged' 1,187 of the 2,551 children ages five and older who were forcibly separated from their parents. The government has also reunited 58 out of 103 children who are under the age of five and whose reunions were required by the first deadline, July 10.

The government identified 1,634 class members who are eligible for reunification and are in various stages of the process. However, in the same federal court filing, the government has claimed that the separated children of 917 parents are either not eligible, or “not yet known to be eligible,” for reunification. 

What could render a parent and child “ineligible” for reunification?

The government has provided certain categories of children and parents whom it considers ineligible for reunion by the deadline. These buckets include:

• Parents whom the government has not located
• Parents who are currently in criminal custody
• Parents with an alleged criminal history that would present a danger to the child
• Parents who have a communicable disease

Many of the children whose parents are ineligible may become eligible, for instance as parents are located, released from criminal custody into ICE custody, or a disease passes. 

For parents whose eligibility the government is challenging based on a prohibitive criminal history or unfitness finding by ORR or ICE, more information is clearly needed. As we’ve argued in court — the government’s word alone on this determination is not sufficient, which is why we’ve asked the court to order the government to provide details about the nature of the charge, conviction, or warrant for each parent whom the government excluded, so that we can verify that not reunifying the child is truly in their best interest.

On July 20, Judge Sabraw indicated that he would wait to rule on this matter until after the July 26 deadline, instead focusing on all eligible class members ahead of that day.  

For children under 5, the government said that 20 children fit these criteria and for children five and over, 64. These numbers may change given that 260 parents are still being categorized in the government's murky "further evaluation" bucket.

As of July 23, the government reported that 130 parents had waived their right for reunification, meaning that their child would stay in the U.S. while they are removed, either in Office of Refugee Resettlement custody or possibly being released to a sponsor.

It is critical that we are able to reach these parents and independently verify that they made this important choice with full knowledge of their families’ legal rights. In court on Friday, the government was not able to say how many of the 136 parents were still in the country, and this is information we will continue to press for.

The government still hasn’t found all the parents?

As of July 20, the Trump administration reported that it had 37 children in government custody who have “not yet been matched” to a parent from whom they were taken.

Additionally, when asked in court, the administration was not able to provide a count of the number of parents who were released from ICE custody and whose locations are still unknown.

Finally, there is the all-important question of where are the parents whom the government has already deported? For the separated children under five years old, there were an estimated 12 parents who had already been deported by the time of the court’s June 26 order requiring reunion. 

On July 23, the government reported that per “case notes,” as many as 463 parents of children five and older may no longer be in the United States. These cases are apparently “under review.”

What happens to families when the parents have final orders of removal?

As of July 23, the government estimated that 900 parents have final orders of removal. It’s crucial that the decisions they make about the future of their children’s asylum claims are informed and non-coerced. It cannot be made until parents not only have had the time to fully discuss the ramifications with their children, but also to seek legal advice.

We sought a court order that would block the deportation of any parent until one week after they are reunited with their children. The court is weighing this request, but in the short-term, it has blocked all deportations until July 24.