Etienne Note: This article also appears in “Government”, Media and Academia Criminality Exposed, A digest of HUNDREDS and HUNDREDS of articles exposing and suggesting inter-generational organized crime’s control of the “Government,” Media and Academia by the Art of Liberty Foundation. You can view the other articles or subscribe on Telegram: https://t.me/Government_Scams
By Hannah Critchfield and Shane Shifflett, The Wall Street Journal
Tired_Thumb is far from alone.
In recent months, ICE has deployed a round-the-clock digital dragnet to scour the public internet, from Facebook to Instagram to X, for speech that could endanger the agency's mission. The government has paid millions to private contractors to surface everything from potential threats to agents to activities that could disrupt ICE's operations, according to federal documents, contractors and former Homeland Security Investigations agents.
The program has ensnared U.S. citizens and activist groups that alert community members about ICE activity. Contractors prepare daily reports and dossiers on threat actors, identifying the poster's name, location, date of birth, workplace, social security number, vehicle registration, and criminal history when possible. To unmask anonymous online critics, DHS has sent hundreds of subpoenas to social media companies, according to people familiar with the matter. Its agents have tracked down Americans at work and on the road, asking them to sign letters acknowledging their online speech about ICE may be a crime. DHS says it is trying to protect its agents and their families from coordinated campaigns of violence that have fueled an 8,000 percent increase in death threats since Trump took office. But civil rights lawyers and former DHS staffers say the approach has swept up people expressing opinions that are protected by the First Amendment.
Etienne note: To provide the fuller picture beyond what the paywalled portion makes available, the following section complements this reporting with additional information drawn from other outlets that have covered related aspects of ICE’s surveillance apparatus, including its origins, technical scope, legal concerns, and documented impact on U.S. citizens.
Additional context: origins, scope, and documented impact
The current surveillance effort builds on infrastructure ICE has used since at least 2020, when the agency first contracted with Giant Oak, a firm retained for social-media monitoring during both the first Trump administration and the Biden administration. What has expanded under the current program is the depth of profiling involved: contractors are now instructed to assess a poster’s “proclivity for violence” using behavioral-science methods and psychological profiles, aided by facial-recognition tools that can match a photo to a person’s broader online footprint and offline identity — including, according to procurement documents, family ties and relationship networks.
Independent reviews of ICE’s monitoring tools have found the dragnet extends across more than 200 websites, ranging from mainstream platforms to niche online communities — including sites catering to hobbyists, car owners, and dating-app users. Notably, the list also includes Truth Social and Rumble, platforms generally associated with the president’s own political base, suggesting the program’s reach may extend beyond its stated focus on foreign nationals or undocumented immigrants to encompass U.S. citizens more broadly.
Civil-liberties advocates have raised concerns that go beyond the immigrant community the agency says it is focused on protecting. Immigration-rights organizer Cinthya Rodriguez, with the advocacy group Mijente, has argued that assigning automated “sentiment” judgments to people’s online speech fits into a longer pattern of mass surveillance and retaliation against activists. Separately, privacy attorneys have questioned whether ICE is obtaining judicial warrants before deploying these tools, framing the practice as a First Amendment concern given how much political organizing and personal communication now takes place over social media and personal devices.
NPR’s ongoing reporting has documented individual cases of Americans swept into this system — people who monitored ICE activity in their communities and were later confronted by agents who identified them by name and home address, illustrating how the “dossier” process plays out in practice for ordinary citizens rather than only organized threat actors.
DHS has defended the program as a necessary response to a documented surge in violence against its personnel, and has said its efforts are focused on protecting agents and their families rather than suppressing lawful speech. Civil rights lawyers and several former DHS staffers, however, maintain that the practical effect has been to sweep up constitutionally protected expression alongside genuine threats.
Sources:
- Truthout, “Report: ICE Is Expanding Surveillance of Its Critics on Social Media.”
- The Intercept, “ICE Wants to Know if You’re Posting Negative Things About It Online.”
- Project Censored, “ICE Solicits Social Media Surveillance Contracts to Identify Critics.”
- NPR, “What it’s like to get caught in ICE’s surveillance web,” Consider This, March 2026.
- AOL/Washington Post, “ICE Is Mounting a Mass Surveillance Campaign on American Citizens.”
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