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It started as a cheeky response on social media to the US secretary for homeland security. Months later, however, a Europe-based project to unmask US immigration and custom enforcement (ICE) agents has racked up millions of views and mobilised hundreds of volunteers.
“What we’re doing is a reaction to a problematic regime,” said Dominick Skinner, the Netherlands-based Irish national behind the website ICE List, of its mission to remove the anonymity that many of the armed federal agents operate under while deployed to US cities.
The roots of the website trace back to June, when Kristi Noem, the US homeland security secretary, warned that Americans who identified ICE agents publicly would face arrest. “I reposted that and said, ‘well, we’re not in the US, so send them to us,’” said Skinner, 31. “By the evening I had private investigators messaging me, and by the next week we had a framework of how to work.”
The site currently operates as a sort of crowdsourced wiki, drawing on a pool of about 500 volunteers to comb through tips from the public. As tensions swirl over ICE’s presence on US streets, another 300 people have expressed interest in volunteering, he says.
The premise of the site is simple; it publishes the names, positions and, at times, photos of ICE agents as well as others involved in the Trump administration’s hardline on migration. The listings do not include home addresses and phone numbers, said Skinner.
The result has catapulted Skinner and his team of six into the heated debate over the extent to which the Trump administration has allowed federal agents to conceal their identity.
Armed officers have increasingly been wearing balaclavas, masks and sunglasses to hide their faces, and don’t wear the name tags that US law enforcement officers typically do. Sometimes, it’s even hard to discern what agency officers belong to.
In late January the Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, said Democrats would block legislation to fund the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and several other agencies unless demands were met on issues such as requiring that ICE agents have “masks off, body cameras on” and carry proper identification.
The DHS has said that the masks are needed to protect the agents, who they have said, without providing evidence, are experiencing a dramatic surge in violence.
Speaking to the Guardian, Skinner cast doubt on DHS claims of soaring violence. “I always say that ICE aren’t actually fearful of their safety,” he said. “What they’re fearful of is not being invited to baseball games or not being invited to the pub with their friends. Community exclusion – that’s what they’re fearful of.”
His website has received tips on agents’ identities from a variety of sources; from leaks that have released thousands of names at once to people calling in their neighbours, and hotel and bar staff passing along information gleaned from ID cards. A tiny proportion of agents have also been identified using AI and facial recognition technology, he said.
The information is then verified using publicly available data, much of which comes from the agents themselves, said Skinner. “Over 90% of the people we have, we’ve identified through information they themselves have made public,” he said, pointing to sites such as LinkedIn. “All we do is amplify already publicly available information.”
Of the more than 1,500 people who have been identified, five listings have had to be taken down, some due to inaccuracy and others because those listed had left the agency.
He insisted that the site was in the public interest, waving off Noem’s claims that identifying ICE agents is a crime and threats to prosecute offenders.
With polls suggesting that a majority of Americans disapprove of the way ICE is handling its job, Skinner said the aim of the site was to create an atmosphere like that of Chicago in the 1920s, when the public naming of Ku Klux Klan members led many of them to be publicly shunned.
“There were no attacks on members of the KKK, it was a boycott of them in public life,” he said. “And then slowly the KKK disappeared from Chicago. That’s kind of what we’re trying to do here, to just allow the public to know which of their neighbours are involved in this.”
