'Careful What You Post': ICE Expanding Surveillance of Social Media Critics

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is seeking to hire a contractor as part of an effort to expand the monitoring of negative social media posts about the agency, its personnel, and operations, according to a report published Monday.

According to The Intercept's Sam Biddle, ICE is citing "an increase in threats" to agents and leadership as the reason for seeking a contractor to keep tabs on the public's social media activity.

The agency said the contractor "shall provide all necessary personnel, supervision, management, equipment, materials, and services, except for those provided by the government, in support of ICE's desire to protect ICE senior leaders, personnel, and facilities via internet-based threat mitigation and monitoring services."

"These efforts include conducting vulnerability assessments and proactive threat monitoring," ICE added, explaining that the contractor will be required to provide daily and monthly status reports and immediately alert supervisors of "imminent threats."

ICE will require the monitor to identify and report "previous social media activity which would indicate any additional threats to ICE," as well as any information indicating that individuals or groups "making threats have a proclivity for violence" and anything "indicating a potential for carrying out a threat."

According to Biddle:

It's unclear how exactly any contractor might sniff out someone's "proclivity for violence." The ICE document states only that the contractor will use "social and behavioral sciences" and "psychological profiles" to accomplish its automated threat detection.

Once flagged, the system will further scour a target's internet history and attempt to reveal their real-world position and offline identity. In addition to compiling personal information—such as the Social Security numbers and addresses of those whose posts are flagged—the contractor will also provide ICE with a "photograph, partial legal name, partial date of birth, possible city, possible work affiliations, possible school or university affiliation, and any identified possible family members or associates."

The document also requests "facial recognition capabilities that could take a photograph of a subject and search the internet to find all relevant information associated with the subject." The contract contains specific directions for targets found in other countries, implying the program would scan the domestic speech of American citizens.

"Careful what you post," Biddle warned in a social media post promoting his article.

ICE is already monitoring social media posts via contractor Giant Oak, which was hired during the first Trump administration and former Democratic President Joe Biden's term. However, "the goal of this [new] contract, ostensibly, is focused more narrowly on threats to ICE leadership, agents, facilities, and operations," according to Biddle.

Cinthya Rodriguez, an organizer with the immigrant rights group Mijente, told Biddle that "the current administration's attempt to use this technology falls within the agency's larger history of mass surveillance, which includes gathering information from personal social media accounts and retaliating against immigrant activists."

"ICE's attempt to have eyes and ears in as many places as we exist both online and offline should ring an alarm for all of us," Rodriguez added.

The search for expanded ICE social media surveillance comes as President Donald Trump's administration is carrying out what the Republican leader has promised will be the biggest mass deportation campaign in U.S. history. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has been deporting migrants on military flights, with some deportees imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay, the notorious offshore U.S. military prison in Cuba.