ICE Making List of Anyone Who Films Them

“We have a nice little database and now you’re considered a domestic terrorist.”

The Department of Homeland Security has ordered immigration officers to gather identifying information about anyone filming them and to “send that information to Intel who will do a ‘work-up’ on them,” a federal law enforcement official directly involved tells me.

“Meaning, trying to identify them via social media, running their license plates if available, and running a criminal history check,” the official explained.

The directive is part of a sweeping, nationwide effort by U.S. immigration authorities to identify anyone and everyone trying to film their conduct. This includes not just ICE but other Department of Homeland Security agencies like Border Patrol as well. The ultimate goal is to create a list of anti-ICE protestors, which the Trump administration believes are part of an organized network of domestic terrorists.

A loose-lipped ICE agent in Portland, Maine publicly hinted at the effort in an exchange on Friday that was captured on video. The video shows the ICE agent taking pictures of a car belonging to a woman who had been recording him, prompting her to ask why. The ICE agent replies: “‘Cause we have a nice little database and now you’re considered a domestic terrorist. So have fun with that.”

The remark wasn’t just bravado or trolling. In addition to what my own sources at DHS are telling me, David Bier, Director of Immigration Studies at the Cato Institute, published a report last month pulling together reams of incidents similar to the one in Portland. The report concludes that DHS has a formal policy of intimidating people trying to film them on the dubious legal grounds that doing so amounts to impeding federal enforcement.

“DHS has a systematic policy of threatening people who follow ICE or DHS agents to record their activities,” the report says.

But the policy goes farther than just deterring people from filming ICE. As my source explained to me, the Department of Homeland Security is moving to collect intelligence on and watchlist protesters.

Asked about the purpose of DHS policy of filming the ICE filmers, Bier told me that the information are being fed into databases for possible future law enforcement action.

“ICE agents film arrests both to feed the DHS social media blitz and to identify them,” Bier told me. “They upload information to their databases and see if they have outstanding warrants or are here illegally.”

The practice can also be seen in the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis earlier this month. Video of the incident shows ICE Agent Jonathan Ross holding up a phone and filming Good in her vehicle shortly before the shooting.

ICE agent filming Renee Good prior to shooting

There was a lot of confusion about why he was filming, with social media abuzz with speculation that it was publicity related. The agent, it turns out, was likely gathering intelligence to map out the supposed domestic terrorist network to which Trump administration officials would almost immediately assert that Good belonged.

“This domestic act of terrorism to use your vehicle to try to kill law enforcement officers is going to stop; and I'm asking the Department of Justice to prosecute it as domestic terrorism, because it's clear that it's being coordinated,” Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said about Good’s death.

Now, federal officials are reportedly investigating Good’s widow.

The new war on terror is here and this time, Americans are the target.

— Edited by William M. Arkin