In September, 2018 the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) started producing this publication called the “EOIR Morning Briefing.” They’re not quite daily and they look like a collection of news stories. But there’s more.
Rather than just aggregate what the news is saying, these repeatedly include slanted and biased articles from publications like “Breitbart News,” which is otherwise famous for reporting about topics such as “Black Crime.”
In an October edition, the second article under the heading “Legal News” is an opinion piece from Kris Kobach claiming there is no right to ask for asylum in the United States:
Kobach is a former Bush administration employee who was too radical to be elected governor of far-right Kansas, with a history of taking political donations from folks aligned with white supremacist groups. He is also wrong; the federal immigration statute plainly gives “any” immigrant the right to at least ask for asylum.
This “news aggregation” report regularly has the feel of propaganda, as the agency appears to select news pieces that don’t actually reflect the news of the day but instead a political agenda contrary to the law.
Another oddity: these “morning briefings” appear to be written by a third party called “TechMIS” which I assume is a contractor. I’ve filed a FOIA request to ask for the contract and invoices.
Here are the morning briefings:
2018 Sept EOIR Morning Briefing
2018 Oct EOIR Morning Briefing
2018 Nov EOIR Morning Briefing
2019 Jan EOIR Morning Briefing
I found myself googling around and the contractor was not difficult to identify: a Booz Allen “partner” at https://www.techmis.com/ and their main business (though they prefer billing themselves in cybersecurity) seems to be putting out these news aggregations for government agencies on the basis of their “better-than-Google” powerful algorithms which sounds a little like a con job. Website claims
“TechMIS currently provides News Briefing Services to Mike Pompeo, U.S. Secretary of State; Kirstjen Nielsen, Secretary, Department of Homeland Security; Alexander Acosta, Secretary, Department of Labor (DOL); Dr. Ben Carson, Secretary, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD); Ronald Vitiello, Director, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement; James McHenry, Director, U.S. Executive Office for Immigration Review; and several other high-profile customers. Our products directly serve over 300,000 U.S. government employees daily.” I’d love to know if they provide the same kind of garbage to DHS and ICE.
There’s another client list here https://govtribe.com/vendors/technology-management-innovative-solutions-llc-techmis-3l8x7
Your TechMIS guy is “Dr” Steven Mains
https://www.corporationwiki.com/Florida/Tampa/steven-j-mains/66713440.aspx
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/techmis-awarded-department-of-veterans-affairs-vector-contract-300574370.html
https://www.bloomberg.com/profile/company/1034257D:US