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Sam Altman, the embattled CEO of the AI technology company OpenAI, vacillates between warning of a labor market doom loop due to the technology his company developed and promising a new golden era for humanity just around the corner.

In an essay posted to his X account this July, he claimed that “by safely stewarding AGI [artificial general intelligence] into the world, we can enter a new golden age of scientific discovery and progress, and usher in a bright future of incredible human flourishing.” Yet San Francisco technologists like Altman rarely spend significant amounts of time detailing the many ways AI technologies are being rapidly integrated into aggressive immigration enforcement infrastructure across the country, including adoption by local and state police departments tasked with detaining immigrants.

San Francisco has long faced hostility from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has criticized many of the city’s liberal policies, yet significant Florida state resources have flowed to Bay Area tech companies building surveillance infrastructure for the Sunshine State. Peregrine Technologies, a San Francisco firm with financial ties to the DeSantis administration, received $6 million in Florida taxpayer funds through language added to this year’s state budget to develop artificial intelligence software that allows local police to conduct immigration enforcement and collaborate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Florida has zealously integrated artificial intelligence tools into police departments, and since DeSantis became governor in 2019, a series of state legislative measures has created an increasingly hostile environment for immigrants in Florida by integrating federal immigration enforcement with state and local policing. This is happening through the rapid expansion and implementation of 287(g) agreements, which are designed to turn local law enforcement and municipalities into appendages of federal immigration enforcement. Through these agreements, local agencies participate in immigration-related investigations, apprehensions, detentions, information sharing, and biometric data collection. Public entities across the state — including county governments such as Miami-Dade, municipalities such as the City of Miami, public universities, the Florida Highway Patrol, and even the Florida Lottery — have entered into 287(g) agreements.

Florida’s State Board of Immigration Enforcement, the entity responsible for coordination with the federal government when allocating millions of dollars in federal grants for enforcement purposes, has granted millions in taxpayer funds to more than two dozen police agencies across the state, with the specific purpose of purchasing Peregrine technology. The AI-powered software allows police agencies access to court reports, arrest records, police interviews, body cam footage, license plate images, and other records, with the goal of “supercharg[ing] immigration enforcement.”

The Fight Against Surveillance Cameras Is a Struggle for Democracy

The Florida Highway Patrol has also had access to a private surveillance network powered by cameras controlled by Flock Safety, the controversial surveillance company facing backlash across the country. State troopers have conducted hundreds of immigration-related inquiries using Flock’s license plate readers, coinciding with major........

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