The NPR Politics Podcast - ICE is keeping tabs on American citizens

Episode Date: March 10, 2026

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been using a variety of tools to keep tabs on not just immigrants the agency intends to deport but also U.S. citizens who publicly oppose the agency’s tactics. We discuss what that surveillance looks like and what the impact is for people whose activity the agency has tracked. This episode: voting correspondent Miles Parks, reporter Kat Lonsdorf, and power and influence reporter Jude Joffe-Block.This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye.Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below:See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. And we also have NPR reporters Kat Lonsdorf and Jude Joffie Block joining us today. How do you both? Hey. Hey. So today on the show, we're going to be talking about how the Department of Homeland Security is surveilling people in new ways. Because you both along with NPR's Meg Anderson have been digging into a bunch of different tools that DHS is using to track both people who are in the United States illegally, but also U.S. citizens. And I'm not. I want to start with this example of this woman in Minneapolis named Emily, who your story kind of opens with as well. Kat, tell us about who she is and what her experience kind of shows. Yeah, so Emily's experience was back in late January. She was out driving around her neighborhood in Minneapolis, patrolling for ice as a constitutional observer. I'll just say we're only ID Emily by her first name because she fears retribution from the federal government. She told me she was following an ice vehicle at a safe distance into a parking lot when a mass eight. agent leaned out the window, took a picture of her and her license plate, and then rolled down

the window and addressed Emily by name and recited her home address to her. Emily told us that it really shook her. 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. Emily says she didn't know how they pulled up her information so quickly. And that was one of the things we were really trying figure out with this reporting was, you know, we were collecting dozens of stories, talking to people combing through court documents to really try to understand how is this surveillance web that DHS is spinning affecting real people on the ground. Okay. So, I mean, tell me more about what your reporting found out, specifically in Emily's case. I mean, how was the government? Do you have any sense of how

the government was able to get this information on her? We don't know the specifics. I mean, you know, we Ast-Ease and DHS and they say they won't share those tactics with the public. But I mean, it does seem like vehicle registration information is key. You know, law enforcement through license plates can figure out who owns a car and their address. But, you know, there's also a lot of questions out there about what kinds of information DHS and federal agents are collecting on observers like Emily, there was a case in Maine, a woman who was recording, another observer who was recording federal agents on her phone. Her name's Colleen Fagan, and she was watching ICE agents, and as she was watching them with her phone, they were seemingly recording her face

and her license plate, and she recorded this video. Yeah. That's what we're doing. Yeah, why are you taking my information down? Because we have a nice little database. Oh, good. And now you're considered domestic terrorists. So we're videotaping you? So you can hear there. They tell her that they have a, quote, nice little database and that they are considering

her a domestic terrorist. I will say that DHS has denied having a database like this several times since that video went pretty viral. Outgoing secretary, Christy Nome, denied it in front of Congress just last week. Todd Lyons, who's the acting director for ICE, has also denied it in front of Congress. DHS also denied it to us in a statement that we got from them. You know, we did ask DHS why agents are taking pictures of protesters' faces or license plates, and they did not respond to that question when we asked them.

So, you know, we don't know if there is a database like this, despite them denying it, you know, it could be that, you know, these are semantics. Maybe a contractor has a database. Maybe it's not technically a database. These are still things that we don't know. What is clear is that the federal government, And you and I have reported on this a lot, too, is working really hard to consolidate data in new ways and is acquiring data in new ways. And I guess I want to dig into that a little bit. Do we have any sense of like why that is happening more now than it was maybe a year or two ago?

Yeah. As you said, you know, the two of us have reported on this in the voting context. But we've seen lots of other examples of cross-agency data sharing. And so and actually, some of these are agreements with ICE. So for example, there's records from Medicaid that a federal judge has now approved because it was challenged in court to be shared with ICE that include address information. You know, one technology that ICE agents have access to is a cell phone app called Elite. It's made by Palantir, which is a company that does a lot in the tech space. It has a lot of government contracts. And this app, and it was described by an ICE agent in court testimony as looking kind of

like Google Maps and showing data points of places where people who could be deported by ICE live and like the likelihood that they live at that address. And it pulls from a lot of different data streams. And Palantir has acknowledged that some of that data includes data from other federal agencies, and we think that includes those Medicaid records, for example. So this is something that we're now starting to see a little bit more how some of these data sharing and consolidation efforts that are happening on the federal level are now trickling down to ICE agents in the field to be able to locate people they want to deport. I mean, I will say, you know, surveillance under DHS is not a new thing,

right? That is a big part of what the Department of Homeland Security does. But, you know, You know, especially under this administration, especially in the Trump's second administration, ICE's budget has ballooned. You know, part of the one big, beautiful bill act that was passed by Congress last year gave ICE something like an $80 billion budget. It was a huge increase from their budget of previous years. And a big part of what they've been using this money for is to scoop up surveillance technology and also sign tech contracts to do things with all of this data aggregation. that Jude is talking about. Figuring out what that money is being spent on, is that it sounds like you guys are basically kind of piecing this together from public records and from talking to people, but is there

any actual kind of government transparency about how that money is being spent? That's a tricky thing. I mean, mostly reporters are looking at procurement sites to try to understand what contracts DHS and its agencies like ICE are signing onto. you know, there's sometimes in court testimony, like with the Palantir Elite app, get an insight into how these technologies are being used. Sometimes stuff will come through FOIA, but it's really just reporters trying to cobble together information to get a better insight into this. And so there's no big report that really gives us a lot of insight. One tool that's been interesting is actually DHS had to create a document about how it's using. artificial intelligence, and that actually has given some insight into the tools it's using because the ones that use AI, they have to do some accounting. And so there's an actual

spreadsheet that says the names of tools and how they're being used. And so that's given some more insight. But yeah, it's just reporters trying to cobble together how this stuff is working. Do we have any sense on whether these tactics are different for people who have crossed into the United States illegally, who are here without legal status? And who DHS obviously seeks to deport versus the U.S. citizens that we've been talking about? Well, we do know that ICE is using facial recognition technology and also location data like Jude was talking about earlier to find people and identify people that it potentially is seeking to deport. But, you know, we're all subject to some level of this surveillance because ultimately if it's being used on one of us, it's possibly being used on all of us, right? But is that legal? I mean, in terms of like, I can understand how the government can justify using this sort of surveillance to track people who, it feels, have committed a crime and therefore need to be deported. If I have not committed a crime, I mean, can you use legally this level of surveillance to figure out what I'm doing?

And, you know, and that is exactly one of the big questions here. You know, but just to give a concrete example, you know, one tool that's really exploded and not just for. DHS are automatic license plate readers, which are, you know, all over freeways and entries and exits into cities at this point and a great tool for law enforcement to be able to track down cars that are stolen or that might have committed a crime. But it's picking up license plate information on everyone and it can allow law enforcement, including DHS, which controls some of these license plate readers and has access to others, to really locate in most cars. that it wants to find because they'll be picked up in this camera network. So that's an example where, you know, critics of this technology say, this is mass surveillance and that law enforcement

shouldn't just have this unfettered access to this level of data. I mean, and I will just say that this is just one more way that we've seen this administration push the boundaries of the law. And then the courts have to go, you know, try to figure out where those boundaries are. So we're just seeing a lot of these cases make it to the courts, and then the courts are going to have to decide where the boundaries are around a lot of these laws. I mean, that also is something we see happen with technology, right? Too, this is a lot of new technology. A lot of it, the law is playing catch-up on. And so a lot of these questions that we have about where the legality is is something that's going to have to be figured out in a courtroom. All right. Well, I want to

dig into also how this is impacting free speech as well, but we'll get into that after a quick break. And we're back. And we've been talking about all these new novel ways that the Department of Homeland Security is surveilling people. We've been focusing at this point on people being surveilled out in the world. But I'm curious, Kat, on if we're also seeing new tactics play out, tracking people's lives online. Yeah, we absolutely are, specifically on social media. And we're seeing that play out a lot through something called administrative subpoenas, which DHS is sending to tech companies like Google or meta, demanding, personal information to unmask anonymous accounts, specifically anonymous accounts that are tracking ICE activity or critical of ICE. You know, administrative subpoenas can be issued by a federal

agency like DHS without a judge or a grand jury. They've typically been used with tech companies in the past involving serious offenses like child sexual abuse material. But now privacy and civil rights experts say that we've seen a big uptick in them being. sent to tech companies to threaten free speech. We talked to Steve Loney, an attorney at the ACLU in Pennsylvania, who has represented several people who have been subpoenaed in this way in recent months. And he told us that a pattern is starting to emerge. 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. You know, and the scale of this is still really unknown at this. point. So ACLU has helped a handful of people fight these administrative subpoenas in court, and DHS has backed down. But it's possible, like many more people got emails, you know, from companies like META, letting them know that some kind of subpoena had been issued, but people might have missed it. They might not be checking that email account regularly, whichever when they signed up for their Instagram, you know, years ago, or they might have thought it was spam or fishing.

We talked to one person who got one of those emails and at first didn't know what it was or thought it was some kind of scam. And that means that people might have lost their ability to fight that subpoena in a timely way and their information might have been turned over to DHS without them even realizing it. Wait, so these are people who have posted online, like indicating they've done criminal activity or something like that? Or these are people, why is the government able to basically request information on these people? Yeah, I mean, that's a good question. Again, it's something that I think the courts are figuring out. And like Jude said, every time that we know of that someone has challenged one of these administrative subpoenas specifically in regards to them speaking out against ICE online in a court, DHS has withdrawn the subpoena almost immediately within days or weeks. And so, you know, the legality of it hasn't been challenged in court because DHS is withdrawing these subpoenas. You know, for example, I talk to one person. His name is Sherman Austin. He lives in Long Beach, California. He runs an account called Stop IceNet. It posts a lot of posts, you know, critical of ice. And he shared a post back in September that identified an ICE agent who was operating in California. It identified

this agent all through publicly available information like a photo taken in public of the ICE agent, wearing his uniform with a name tag on it, stuff like that. And it was a day or two later. that he got one of these emails from META saying that law enforcement had requested his information. And he had a couple email exchanges back and forth with META, finally got a redacted copy of the subpoena that was sent from DHS. The reason given was, quote, officer safety or doxing, which, you know, Sherman Austin said was surprising to him. And he did take it to court. And DHS did withdraw that subpoena. I mean, the other thing I'm curious about is a lot of what we talked about, less so with this online activity, but talking about this woman in Minnesota and what happened in Maine, kind of related to the increased immigration enforcement efforts we saw last year that we know have been scaled back this year. Do we have a sense on whether the surveillance activity has also similarly scaled back or what is going on, I guess, at this moment related to all of this?

I mean, we honestly don't know. But just because there aren't as many federal agents on the ground doesn't mean that people aren't still being tracked, right? Again, we don't know if there's a database of some kind being compiled, even though DHS says there isn't. But we also know that surveillance is happening online like we just talked about. So it really doesn't matter if there are agents physically present somewhere or not. And what about the impact, I guess, on the people who you spoke to who have interacted with these surveys? efforts. I mean, what have they said about how it has sort of kind of changed their lives or changed their behavior? Well, there's actually two lawsuits to watch. One in Minnesota brought by the ACLU on behalf of protesters and observers there and another in Maine brought by Protect Democracy and a number of law firms on behalf of observers there who are saying that their First Amendment rights have been violated by federal immigration agents and these kinds of intimidation tactics that are chilling their right to express themselves, their right to record and observe.

And, you know, they are expressed, you know, feeling fearful and not knowing if they could continue to do this kind of work. And, you know, one of these observers, you know, talked about all the precautions she takes. She's concerned that federal agents know which car is hers. So she's mindful about where she parks and doesn't park too close to the homes she's visiting when she flew recently. She didn't want to take her personal cell phone with her for fear that it would be searched. So these tactics are having a lot of effect on the people who've had these firsthand interactions with agents. And I think one question moving forward is, you know, in this environment, you know, how is that going to affect political speech moving forward? You know, people canvassing for certain

candidates, attending protests. How is this going to affect people's feeling that they have that freedom to express themselves without consequence? Yeah, and one thing I'll just add to that is that we have a constitutional right to free speech and baked into that right is the ability to criticize the government anonymously. And all of the surveillance that we've been talking about is making that anonymity increasingly difficult to preserve. All right, well, we can leave that there for today. Kat and Jude, thank you so much for sharing all this great reporting with us. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, thanks for having us. And tomorrow on the show, we're going to get into the economic impact of the ongoing war in Iran. Make sure to hit that follow button on whatever podcast app you use to make

sure you don't miss it. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. And thank you for listening to the MPR politics podcast.