It started as a cheeky social media joke directed at the US Secretary of Homeland Security. But a few months later, a European-based project aimed at exposing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents had garnered millions of views and mobilized hundreds of volunteers.
“What we are doing is a reaction to a problematic regime,” Dominic Skinner, an Irish citizen based in the Netherlands and behind the website ICE List, a project aimed at de-anonymizing armed federal agents operating in American cities, told the Guardian.
The site's roots go back to June, when Kristi Noem, the US Homeland Security Secretary, warned that Americans who publicly identified themselves to ICE agents would be arrested. "I shared that and said, 'Well, we're not in the US, send them to us,'" said Skinner, 31. "By that evening, I was getting calls from private investigators, and by the next week we had a framework for how to work."
The site currently relies on about 500 volunteers to review citizen tips. As tensions rise over the presence of ICE on American streets, another 300 people have expressed interest in volunteering, he says.
The premise of the site is simple: it publishes the names, positions and, sometimes, photos of ICE agents and others involved in the Trump administration's hardline immigration crackdown. The posts do not include home addresses or phone numbers, Skinner told the British newspaper.
"I always say that ICE agents don't really fear for their own safety. What they fear is not being invited to baseball games or not being invited to the pub by their friends. Exclusion from the community - that's what they fear," Skinner said.
Armed officers increasingly wear balaclavas, masks and sunglasses to hide their faces, and they don't even wear the name tags that American police officers usually wear. Sometimes it's even difficult to tell which agency they belong to.
In late January, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said Democrats would block legislation funding the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and several other agencies unless requirements were met on issues such as requiring ICE agents to be “maskless, with body cameras on,” and to wear proper identification.
DHS said the masks were needed to protect agents, who it said were facing a dramatic increase in violence.
Speaking to The Guardian, Skinner expressed skepticism about DHS’s claims of a surge in violence. “I always say that ICE is not really afraid for their safety,” he said. “What they are afraid of is not being invited to baseball games or not being invited to the pub by their friends. Exclusion from the community — that’s what they are afraid of.”
His site has received tips about the identities of agents from a variety of sources: from leaks that suddenly revealed thousands of names, to people reporting their neighbors, to hotel and bar staff passing on ID card information. A small number of agents have also been identified using artificial intelligence and facial recognition technology, he says.
Skinner insists the site is in the public interest, rejecting Noemi's claims that identifying ICE agents is a crime and threats that perpetrators will be prosecuted.
As polls show that most Americans disapprove of the way ICE is doing its job, Skinner says the site aims to create an atmosphere similar to that of Chicago in the 1920s, when the public release of the names of Ku Klux Klan members led to many being publicly ostracized.
"There were no attacks on KKK members, but a boycott of public life," he said. "And then the KKK slowly disappeared from Chicago. That's kind of what we're trying to do here - let the public know which of their neighbors are involved in this."
"I always say that ICE agents don't really fear for their own safety. What they fear is not being invited to baseball games or not being invited to the pub by their friends. Exclusion from the community - that's what they fear," Skinner said.
Bonus video:
