AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
What is it like getting caught in the Department of Homeland Security's surveillance web? NPR has collected dozens of accounts from people who have experienced just that. Together, they paint a picture of the broad tools that DHS - and more specifically, ICE - is using to monitor and apprehend the people it seeks to deport and intimidate U.S. citizens critical of its policies. NPR's Kat Lonsdorf has more.
KAT LONSDORF, BYLINE: On an evening in late January, Emily was driving through her Minneapolis neighborhood, patrolling for Immigration Enforcement or ICE. NPR is only identifying Emily by her first name because she fears retribution from the federal government. She followed an ICE vehicle at a safe distance into a parking lot.
EMILY: And then someone leaned out of the passenger side of that SUV and took a picture of me and my car.
LONSDORF: The SUV made a sudden U-turn and barreled towards her, braking right next to her car, and then a masked agent rolled down the window and addressed Emily by name.
EMILY: And she yelled, Emily, Emily, we're going to take you home. Then she looked at her phone, and she recited my home address.
LONSDORF: Emily said she's not sure how the agents pulled up her information so quickly, but it left her shaken.
EMILY: Their message was not subtle, right? They were, in effect, saying, we see you. We can get to you whenever we want to. And it did scare me.
LONSDORF: NPR collected dozens of accounts through both interviews and court documents and found many similar experiences from protesters, immigrants and journalists.
SAIRA HUSSAIN: You know, we talk a lot about the Constitution and about what the founding fathers would have wanted.
LONSDORF: Saira Hussain is a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonpartisan, nonprofit focused on defending civil liberties in the digital world.
HUSSAIN: And I think that when you look at our ever-present surveillance state and the ways in which people are being retaliated against and identified, I think that this is exactly what they wouldn't have wanted.
LONSDORF: DHS says its use of this technology falls within the law. ICE's budget has skyrocketed during President Trump's second term and has, in part, been used to purchase an array of surveillance tools and tech contracts. And the Trump administration has been aggregating Americans' personal data and making it more accessible to ICE. It remains unclear exactly how federal agents are using that data or what they're doing with photographs they take of protesters' faces. In January, a protester in Portland, Maine, named Colleen Fagan was taking video of federal agents when one of them appeared to start recording her and photographing her license plate.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
COLLEEN FAGAN: Yeah. Why are you taking my information down?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: What are you guys doing over there?
UNIDENTIFIED ICE AGENT: 'Cause we have a nice little database.
FAGAN: Oh, good.
UNIDENTIFIED ICE AGENT: And now you're considered a domestic terrorist so...
FAGAN: (Laughter).
LONSDORF: DHS has repeatedly denied that such a database exists. The agency did not respond to a question from NPR about why its agents are taking photos of observers. Instead, it said in a statement that DHS, quote, "will not reveal law enforcement methods or tactics."
NATHAN WESSLER: Part of what's so pernicious about it is that people don't know what's going on.
LONSDORF: Nathan Wessler is the deputy director of the Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project at the ACLU.
WESSLER: Nobody should have to wonder if they're merely being intimidated or actually, you know, being subjected to an invasive biometric scan. That's really just incredibly corrosive in what is supposed to be a free and open society.
LONSDORF: We do know that federal immigration agents are using facial recognition software and location technology to find immigrants they seek to deport. The web of surveillance by DHS extends to social media too.
SHERMAN AUSTIN: I was just opening my email, and I saw this letter.
LONSDORF: Sherman Austin runs an Instagram account called stopice.net.
AUSTIN: I thought at first, is this, like, a scam, or is there some kind of phishing thing going on?
LONSDORF: Back in September, he received an email from Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, informing him that law enforcement was seeking information on his account. Austin was able to get a heavily redacted copy of an administrative subpoena sent to Meta, issued by DHS.
STEVE LONEY: DHS has expanded its practice of using administrative subpoenas.
LONSDORF: Steve Loney is an attorney with the ACLU of Pennsylvania, which has represented several people who have had their online information subpoenaed this way.
LONEY: The pattern appears to be, as soon as people become vocal critics of what's happening in immigration enforcement, they get an email from their social media company that says the government has requested your data.
LONSDORF: Such subpoenas can be issued by federal agencies without a judge or a grand jury. Privacy and civil rights experts say they're being used to threaten free speech. Just days before Austin received that email from Meta, he had shared a post on Instagram that identified an ICE agent all through publicly available information. The reason DHS listed for his subpoena was, quote, "officer safety and doxing."
AUSTIN: Which I thought was funny 'cause how can you dox someone if they've already made their information public?
LONSDORF: Austin asked a federal court to block the subpoena. DHS withdrew it several weeks later, which Loney says is also part of the pattern. Austin is very public about running his account, but Loney says many of these administrative subpoenas are meant to unmask anonymous accounts critical of ICE, which he says is unconstitutional.
LONEY: The ability to criticize the government anonymously is baked into our First Amendment rights.
LONSDORF: And that anonymity is becoming increasingly difficult to preserve.
Kat Lonsdorf, NPR News, Washington. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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