Surveilled and Sold is an investigative series about how surveillance technologies track immigrants in an era of mass deportation — and the ways private companies and the U.S. government buy, sell, and exchange our personal data. This story first appeared on palabra, the digital news site by the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
When I first see Nemorio, he is sitting by himself at the Voz Worker Center in Southeast Portland, Oregon. The 56-year-old is bundled up in neon-colored winter clothes and watching a soccer game on his phone.
Job hunting looks a lot different than it used to. When he joined the Worker Center 14 years ago, he left behind standing on a cold street corner for a safer, warmer place to find work. Nemorio is a professional landscaper, but he takes all sorts of jobs: a request to help someone move, paint their house, clean their business’s exterior, or other construction or landscaping-related needs. A Portlander of 22 years, he has worked for some of the same clients for over a decade…