ICE agents are “defaming” themselves

Last week, A The website called ICE List has gone viral after its creators He said They received what they described as a leak of personal information about about 4,500 people Department of Homeland Security employees. However, a WIRED analysis of the site found that the database relies heavily on information that DHS employees have posted publicly online themselves. This comes as the Department of Homeland Security has described reporting or publicizing the identity of ICE officers as “defamation.” Threatened with prosecution Violators to the fullest extent permitted by law.

The ICE List operates as a collective wiki run by volunteers, who have discretion in deciding who is added and what is marked as “verified.” Like Wikipedia, to which it has no relation, the ICE List contains category pages that contain a link to each page listed in that category. Not everyone on the list is an ICE employee or even affiliated with a federal agency; For example, former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, whose DHS He told the Associated Press He is not an ICE agent, and is listed under the “Agents” category on the wiki. On his actual page, his “Agency” is listed as “N/A” and his “Role” is listed as “Instigator.” (Tario to publish (X stated that he had hoped to work for ICE, but described the ICE roster page as misleading information.)

Dominic Skinner, owner of ICE List, says he doesn’t think what ICE List is doing is any kind of defamation. ICE List does not publish the home addresses of specific customers, and says on its About page that “false submissions, harassment, or attempts to abuse the platform will be removed.”

“If this is defamation, then we are defaming ourselves simply by being in online environments, which is somewhat ironic,” Skinner says.

WIRED reviewed the pages of individuals who were included in the “Agents” category on ICE’s list as of January 22. Of the 1,580 pages, nearly 90 percent mentioned LinkedIn as a source of information, although some of the links mentioned now appear to be broken, and not all links support the claims made on the wiki. (Someone listed as “active” on the ICE list, for example, might have a LinkedIn account that portrays them as a former ICE legal counsel. On their “About” page, the ICE list says “Errors may occur.”) Other linked profiles lack photos and don’t appear to be very active. However, some of the links appear to match federal immigration agents previously named in official ICE press releases and in court records.

Like other LinkedIn users, those who identify themselves as ICE deportation officers and other types of Department of Homeland Security employees, in many cases, post New Year’s resolutions, engage with meandering motivational posts about what it means to lead, and let people know they’re #opentowork.

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment.

The pages of some individuals on the ICE Wikilist cite OpenPayrollsa searchable database of public employee salaries that includes some ICE employees, and SignalHirea data broker that specializes in generating leads, as sources of information.

An OpenPayrolls spokesperson wrote in an email that it has no affiliation with the ICE list and that the ICE-related payroll records on its site were released by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. The spokesperson also said: “To date, we have not received any communication from any government agency expressing concerns about the display of public records on our transparency website.”

SignalHire did not respond to a request for comment, but it also includes direct links to the LinkedIn profiles of people representing themselves as ICE officials on its website.