A/HRC/48/Add.xx border and immigration enforcement context. By so doing, they are subjecting refugees, migrants, stateless persons and others to human rights violations, and extracting large quantities of data from these groups on exploitative terms that strip them of fundamental human agency and dignity. Although this report focuses on recent technological innovations, many of these technologies have historical antecedents in colonial technologies of racialized governance. 6. The analysis in the Special Rapporteur’s previous report on racial discrimination and emerging digital technologies is essential background for this report. That report is especially helpful for explaining the mechanisms that cause racial discrimination through emerging digital technologies, and for highlighting the economic, political and other societal forces driving the expansion in the discriminatory use of these technologies. Here, she reiterates that notwithstanding widespread perceptions of emerging digital technologies as neutral and objective in their operation, race, ethnicity, national origin and citizenship status shape access to and enjoyment of human rights in all fields in which these technologies are now pervasive. States have obligations to prevent, combat and remediate this racial discrimination, and private actors, such as corporations, have related responsibilities to do the same. In the context of border and immigration enforcement, preventing human rights violations may require outright bans or abolition of technologies due to a failure to control or mitigate their effects. 7. Not only is technology not neutral, but its design and use typically reinforce dominant social, political and economic trends. As highlighted in previous reports, the resurgence of ethnonationalist populism globally has had serious xenophobic and racially discriminatory consequences for refugees, migrants and stateless persons.5 This report highlights how digital technologies are being deployed to advance the xenophobic and racially discriminatory ideologies which have proliferated in part due to widespread perceptions of refugees and migrants as per se threats to national security. In other cases, discrimination and exclusion occur not due to explicit animus, but because of the pursuit of bureaucratic and humanitarian efficiency without necessary human rights safeguards. The ongoing securitization of borders, and related massive economic profits, are a significant part of the problem. 8. This report reflects valuable input from: expert group meetings hosted by the Promise Institute for Human Rights at the University of California, Los Angeles, (UCLA) School of Law, the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry, the Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion, and the Migration and Technology Monitor; interviews with researchers, including stateless persons, migrants and refugees; and submissions received by a range of stakeholders in response to a public call for submissions. Non-confidential submissions are available on the webpage of the mandate. II. The Rise of Digital Borders 9. Technology has always been a part of border and immigration enforcement, and instruments ranging from passports and even physical border walls are all properly understood as features of this technology. This report specifically focuses on the growing prevalence of digital technologies in immigration and border enforcement. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated this trend by encouraging the reliance on technological solutions to migration challenges. The “border industry” has begun advocating for “contactless biometrics” technology to combat the spread of the virus,6 and public health and national security concerns are used to justify increased tracking and data collection of migrants. 7 10. As a general matter, digital border technologies are reinforcing parallel border regimes that segregate the mobility and migration of different groups on the basis of national origin and class, among other grounds. Automated border controls are one example of parallel border regimes in action. At Irish ports of entry, such as Dublin Airport, e-passport 5 6 7 4 See, e.g., A/73/312. https://edri.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Technological-Testing-Grounds.pdf. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/pandemic-border/covid-19-can-technology-become-tooloppression-and-surveillance/.