DHS

Inside the DHS forum where ICE agents trash talk one another

DHS, Forums, ice, Policy, syndication / Shannon Garcia / February 18, 2026

Complaining about your job

Forum members have discussed their discomfort with mass deportation efforts.

Credit: Al Drago/Getty Images

Every day, people log into an online forum for current and former Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) officers to share their thoughts on the news of the day and complain about their colleagues in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

“ERO is too busy dressing up as Black Ops Commandos with Tactical body armor, drop down thigh rigs, balaclavas, multiple M4 magazines, and Punisher patches, to do an Admin arrest of a non criminal, non-violent EWI that weighs 90 pounds and is 5 foot 2, inside a secure Federal building where everyone has been screened for weapons,” wrote one user in July 2025. (ERO stands for Enforcement and Removal Operations; along with HSI, it’s one of the two major divisions of ICE, and is responsible for detaining and deporting immigrants.)

The forum describes itself as a space for current and prospective HSI agents, “designed for the seasoned HSI Special Agent as well as applicants for entry level Special Agent positions.” HSI is the division within ICE whose agents are normally responsible for investigating crimes like drug smuggling, terrorism, and human trafficking.

In the forum, users discuss their discomfort with the US’s mass deportation efforts, debate the way federal agents have interacted with protesters and the public, and complain about the state of their working conditions. Members have also had heated discussions about the shooting of two protesters in Minneapolis, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and the ways immigration enforcement has taken place around the US.

The forum is one of several related forums where people working in different parts of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) share experiences and discuss specific details of their work. WIRED previously reported on a forum where current and former deportation officers from ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) similarly complained about their jobs and discussed the way the agency was conducting immigration raids. The HSI forum appears to be linked, even including some of the same members.

People do not need to show proof of their employment to join these forums, and the platform does not appear to be heavily moderated. WIRED has not confirmed the individual identities of these posters, though posters share details that likely would only be known to those intimately familiar with the job. There are more than 2,000 members with posts going back to at least 2004.

DHS and ICE did not respond to requests for comment.

Following the killings of both Good and Pretti, the forum’s members were heavily divided. In a January 12 thread, five days after Good was shot by ICE agent Jonathan Ross, a poster who has been a part of the forum since 2016 wrote, “IMHO, the situation with ICE Operations have gotten to an unprecedented level of violence from both the Suspects and the General Public. I hope the AG is looking at the temporary suspension of Civil Liberties, (during and in the geographic locales where ICE Operations are being conducted).”

A user who joined the forum in 2018 and identifies as a recently retired agent responded, “This is an excellent idea and well warranted. These are organized, well financed civil disturbances, dare I say an INSURRECTION?!?”

In a January 16 post titled “The Shooting,” some posters took a more nuanced view. “I get that it is a good shoot legally and all that, but all he had to do was step aside, he nearly shot one of his partners for Gods sake!” wrote a poster who first joined the forum in March 2022. “A USC woman non-crim shot in the head on TV for what? Just doesn’t sit well with me… A seasoned SRT guy who was able to execute someone while holding a phone seems to me he could have simply got out of the way.” SRT refers to ICE’s elite special response team, who undergo special training to operate in high-risk situations. USC refers to US citizens.

“You clearly haven’t been TDY anywhere. Yes, they were going to arrest her for 111,” responded another poster who joined the forum in June 2018. “Tons of USCs are being arrested for it daily.” 111 refers to the part of the US criminal code that deals with assaulting, resisting, or impeding federal officers; TDY refers to “temporary duty,” where officers are pulled to different locations for a limited period of time.

“Can’t believe we have ‘supposed agents’ here questioning the shooting of a domestic terrorist,” wrote a third user who joined the forum in December 2025. (In the wake of the shooting, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem called Good a “domestic terrorist.”)

“If you think a fat unarmed lesbian in a Honda is a ‘Terrorist’ then you are a fake ass cop!” the original poster replied. “I have worked real Terrorism cases, and I am not saying it was a bad shoot and not defending her. I am just saying it did not have to happen.”

Later in the thread, a poster who joined the forum in July 2023 replied, “Remember, these are the same agents who think J6’ers were just misunderstood rowdy tourists, and that Ashley Babbitt is a national hero…and if you dare say something negative about Trump, or try to hold him accountable, you’re suddenly a leftie, communist, lunatic (even though I’m a Republican).”

In a different thread following the shooting of Pretti on January 24 by a CBP agent, a poster who has been a part of the forum since 2023 and who also identified as a retired agent wrote, “Yet another ‘justified’ fatal shooting…They all carry gun belts and vest with 9,000 pieces of equipment on them and then best they can do is shoot a guy in the back.”

The thread devolved into posters debating whether members of the January 6 insurrection were domestic terrorists, and why Kyle Rittenhouse, who shot and killed two people during a 2020 Black Lives Matter protest, was apprehended alive.

“I just want to mention, we all get emotions are heightened right now. But I highly doubt being a legacy customs guy you ever did anything where the risk was beyond the potential for paper cuts,” wrote a user who first joined the forum in June 2025. “It’s a new day with new threats in an environment you never fathomed in your career.”

Even before the shootings of Good and Pretti, members of the forum questioned the wisdom of bringing HSI into the Trump administration’s mass mobilization around immigration enforcement. HSI deals specifically with criminal cases and investigations, but living and working in the US without documentation is a civil offense, and the majority of immigrants who were detained or deported in 2025 had not committed any crimes.

One poster complained that doing so was pulling HSI resources away from more urgent casework.

“The use of 1811s — HSI or otherwise — for administrative immigration enforcement is a complete misuse of resources,” wrote a user who joined the forum in October 2022 in a January 7 post. 1811’s refers to a category of law enforcement officers generally referred to as special agents who conduct criminal investigations. “They could be doing these crime surges for literally any type of federal criminal investigations (drugs, child exploitation, gangs, etc.), and it would be a much better use of resources. Not only that, our reputations would still be intact.”

Others in the forum have complained about HSI’s relationship with ICE’s ERO teams. “It’s pretty bad when ERO at a large metropolitan city get’s backed up with 30 bodies and they call the SA’s in to process,” wrote a poster on July 7, 2025 who has been a part of the forum since 2010. SAs refers to special agents. “I guess that is what happens when they have not done any immigration work in decades.”

“Complete opposite in our [area of responsibility],” a poster who first joined the forum in 2012 replied. “No one has a clue what most of ero is doing and are asking us to be included on anything immigration we’re doing and introduce them to DEA contacts working investigations involving illegals.”

A third poster, who has been a forum member since 2024, added that “ERO does essentially nothing. I walked in the office the other day and the HSI SAs were doing jail pickups and processing. The ERO folks were gathered around a desk drinking coffee and joking around.” In cases where ICE has a request out to jails for a person they’re pursuing, known as an immigration detainer, jails will hold that person for up to “48 hours beyond the time they would ordinarily release them” to allow ICE to pick them up.

In the lead up to federal immigration authorities’ operations in Minneapolis, members complained about long hours. “How are RHAs expected to go on TDYs with NO days off and lots of [overtime] when they are all capped out (biweekly and yearly [sic]),” complained a user who first joined the forum in December 2004 in a post from December 7, 2025. RHAs refers to rehired annuitants, or retired federal agents who have returned to the job and continue to collect their federal retirement benefits. “ERO has NO caps.”

“I’m capped out so only getting paid for 5 days at 10 hours a day,” wrote the user who first joined the forum in 2010 in another thread (overtime pay rules can vary from agency to agency). ”Anything over 50 hours a week and I’m working for free.”

Others in the forum said they were waiting for their promised sign-on bonuses, and expressed disappointment with what they saw in their paychecks. For rehired annuitants, ICE offered a signing bonus of up to $50,000. “Not sure how they calculated the current pay from the super check received today, but mine can’t be right,” a poster who joined the forum in 2021 wrote in an October post. “My super check netted me a grand total of $600 more.”

In another thread on bonuses, a user who has been a forum member since 2005 replied, “I got a deposit last night or early this morning,” they wrote. “It looks like 10k after taxes plus my regular pay check. Not sure yet. However the deal was 20K. WTF?!”

In a December thread, other members discussed the way immigration agents had begun to interact more aggressively with protesters. The user identified as a retired agent wrote, “I’ve seen a lot of videos lately of HSI or ERO agents getting triggered by civilians taking photos or videos of them or their vehicles. In several of the videos the agents are seen jumping out of their GOVs, manhandling the civilian, and smashing or confiscating their phones.” The user expressed bewilderment about the behavior, writing that they “would have been fired and/or prosecuted for something like this. I believe everyone knows at this point that taking photos/videos is a protected act unless someone is clearly impeding or obstructing (which doesn’t always appear to be the case).”

Another poster, who joined the forum in September 2025, replied, “Ah…Cell phone video. You can make them tell what ever story you want with creative editing.”

As part of the response to immigration operations, particularly in Minnesota, civilians have organized to monitor federal agents, coordinating to witness and record their operations, and sometimes tailing suspected ICE vehicles, checking licence plates in Signal groups. Federal agents, in turn, have been seen taking photos and videos of protesters, with one legal observer in Maine claiming that an agent told her she would be added to a terror watchlist. (In testimony this week, Todd Lyons, acting director of ICE told members of Congress that ICE was not making such a list of US citizens.)

In posts throughout the forum, members also complain about their access to gear and the agency’s technology. “Apparently there is enough money to buy a bunch of ICE marked cars but not get us some basic protective gear…” wrote one user on January 27, who joined the forum in 2025.

“I also have a suspicion that HQ or the [Executive Associate Director] have not advocated to get us gear to handle all the nut job protesters,” they wrote in a follow up post.

On a thread named “Alien Processing” that started in July 2025, posters complained about “How is it that with all the technology we have and an entire fkn building full of computer geeks this fkn agency cannot make a fkn system that works properly and effectively in a simple user friendly fashion? This Eagle crap is a total mess!” one poster wrote. EAGLE refers to Enforcement Integrated Database (EID) called EID Arrest Guide for Law Enforcement, a system to process the biometric and personal information for people arrested by ICE. “It takes longer to process a fkn alien than it does to actually catch them. We dont need 10,000 new ICE Officers/Agents, just hire fkn people to process them so we can do our jobs of catching them.”

Members also talked about their preferred pieces of ICE tech: Another user, who joined the forum in March 2025, responded to the “Alien Processing” thread, writing “Mobile Fortify is the best thing that has come out in a long time,” in reference to the mobile facial recognition app used by federal agents to identify people in the field.

According to DHS’s 2025 AI Use Case Inventory, agents have been able to use Mobile Fortify since May 2025. The app uses AI, trained with CBP’s “Vetting/Border Crossing Information/ Trusted Traveler Information,” to match a picture taken by agents and “contactless” fingerprints with existing records. 404 Media reported that the app has misidentified at least one person—perhaps because, as WIRED has reported, it wasn’t designed to be used for what ICE is using it for.

Though ICE’s surge in Minnesota appears to be entering a drawdown, the agency is continuing to expand its footprint across the US, and investing in a network of detention centers and large warehouses for holding immigrants, all indicating that detentions and deportations are not expected to slow down.

“Put yourself in the shoes of the guys in the street strung out on crazy op tempo, being threatened and antagonized all day, having inept leadership, low morale, and then having to fight every formerly low risk non-crim (or barely crim) because they are all hyped up on victim status and liberal energy. Plus hyper partisan radicalization on both sides,” the user who joined the forum in June 2025 wrote. “If you think the news is enraging you now, wait till this spring/summer when we need to fill the mega detention centers.”

This story originally appeared on wired.com.

Wired.com is your essential daily guide to what’s next, delivering the most original and complete take you’ll find anywhere on innovation’s impact on technology, science, business and culture.

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US cyber defense chief accidentally uploaded secret government info to ChatGPT

AI, chatgpt, CISA, cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency, Department of Homeland Security, DHS, ice, openai, Policy / DJ Henderson / January 28, 2026

Cybersecurity “nightmare”

Congress recently grilled the acting chief on mass layoffs and a failed polygraph.

Alarming critics, the acting director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Madhu Gottumukkala, accidentally uploaded sensitive information to a public version of ChatGPT last summer, Politico reported.

According to “four Department of Homeland Security officials with knowledge of the incident,” Gottumukkala’s uploads of sensitive CISA contracting documents triggered multiple internal cybersecurity warnings designed to “stop the theft or unintentional disclosure of government material from federal networks.”

Gottumukkala’s uploads happened soon after he joined the agency and sought special permission to use OpenAI’s popular chatbot, which most DHS staffers are blocked from accessing, DHS confirmed to Ars. Instead, DHS staffers use approved AI-powered tools, like the agency’s DHSChat, which “are configured to prevent queries or documents input into them from leaving federal networks,” Politico reported.

It remains unclear why Gottumukkala needed to use ChatGPT. One official told Politico that, to staffers, it seemed like Gottumukkala “forced CISA’s hand into making them give him ChatGPT, and then he abused it.”

The information Gottumukkala reportedly leaked was not confidential but marked “for official use only.” That designation, a DHS document explained, is “used within DHS to identify unclassified information of a sensitive nature” that, if shared without authorization, “could adversely impact a person’s privacy or welfare” or impede how federal and other programs “essential to the national interest” operate.

There’s now a concern that the sensitive information could be used to answer prompts from any of ChatGPT’s 700 million active users.

OpenAI did not respond to Ars’ request to comment, but Cyber News reported that experts have warned “that using public AI tools poses real risks because uploaded data can be retained, breached, or used to inform responses to other users.”

Sources told Politico that DHS investigated the incident for potentially harming government security—which could result in administrative or disciplinary actions, DHS officials told Politico. Possible consequences could range from a formal warning or mandatory retraining to “suspension or revocation of a security clearance,” officials said.

However, CISA’s director of public affairs, Marci McCarthy, declined Ars’ request to confirm if that probe, launched in August, has concluded or remains ongoing. Instead, she seemed to emphasize that Gottumukkala’s access to ChatGPT was only temporary, while suggesting that the ChatGPT use aligned with Donald Trump’s order to deploy AI across government.

“Acting Director Dr. Madhu Gottumukkala was granted permission to use ChatGPT with DHS controls in place,” McCarthy said. “This use was short-term and limited. CISA is unwavering in its commitment to harnessing AI and other cutting-edge technologies to drive government modernization and deliver” on Trump’s order.

Scrutiny of cyber defense chief remains

Gottumukkala has not had a smooth run as acting director of the top US cyber defense agency after Trump’s pick to helm the agency, Sean Plankey, was blocked by Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) “over a Coast Guard shipbuilding contract,” Politico noted.

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem chose Gottumukkala to fill in after he previously served as her chief information officer, overseeing statewide cybersecurity initiatives in South Dakota. CISA celebrated his appointment with a press release boasting that he had more than 24 years of experience in information technology and a “deep understanding of both the complexities and practical realities of infrastructure security.”

However, critics “on both sides of the aisle” have questioned whether Gottumukkala knows what he’s doing at CISA, Cyberscoop reported. That includes staffers who stayed on and staffers who prematurely left the agency due to uncertainty over its future, Politico reported.

At least 65 staffers have been curiously reassigned to other parts of DHS, Cyberscoop reported, inciting Democrats’ fears that CISA staffers are possibly being pushed over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The same fate almost befell Robert Costello, CISA’s chief information officer, who was reportedly involved with meetings last August probing Gottumukkala’s improper ChatGPT use and “the proper handling of for official use only material,” Politico reported.

Earlier this month, staffers alleged that Gottumukkala took steps to remove Costello from his CIO position, which he has held for the past four years. But that plan was blocked after “other political appointees at the department objected,” Politico reported. Until others intervened to permanently thwart the reassignment, Costello was supposedly given “roughly one week” to decide if he would take another position within DHS or resign, sources told Politico.

Gottumukkala has denied that he sought to reassign Costello over a personal spat that Politico’s sources said sprang from “friction because Costello frequently pushed back against Gottumukkala on policy matters.” He insisted that “senior personnel decisions are made at the highest levels at the Department of Homeland Security’s Headquarters and are not made in a vacuum, independently by one individual, or on a whim.”

The reported move looked particularly shady, though, because Costello “is seen as one of the agency’s top remaining technical talents,” Politico reported.

Congress questioned ongoing cybersecurity threats

This month, Congress grilled Gottumukkala about mass layoffs last year that shrank CISA from about 3,400 staffers to 2,400. The steep cuts seemed to threaten national security and election integrity, lawmakers warned, and potentially have left the agency unprepared for any potential conflicts with China.

At a hearing held by the House Homeland Security Committee, Gottumukkala said that CISA was “getting back on mission” and plans to reverse much of the damage done last year to the agency.

However, some of his responses did not inspire confidence, including a failure to forecast “how many cyber intrusions CISA expects from foreign adversaries as part of the 2026 midterm elections,” the Federal News Network reported. In particular, Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) criticized Gottumukkala for not having “a specific number in mind.”

“Well, we should have that number,” Gonzales said. “It should first start by how many intrusions that we had last midterm and the midterm before that. I don’t want to wait. I don’t want us waiting until after the fact to be able to go, ‘Yeah, we got it wrong, and it turns out our adversaries influenced our election to that point.’”

Perhaps notably, Gottumukkala also dodged questions about reports that he failed a polygraph when attempting to seek access to other “highly sensitive cyber intelligence,” Politico reported.

The acting director apparently blamed six career CISA staffers for requesting that he agree to the polygraph test, which the staffers said was typical protocol but Gottumukkala later claimed was misleading.

Failing the test isn’t necessarily damning, since anxiety or technical errors could trigger a negative result. However, Gottumukkala appears touchy about the test that he now regrets sitting for, calling the test “unsanctioned” and refusing to discuss the results.

It seems that Gottumukkala felt misled after learning that he could have requested a waiver to skip the polygraph. In a letter suspending those staffers’ security clearances, CISA accused staff of showing “deliberate or negligent failure to follow policies that protect government information.” However, staffers may not have known that he had that option, which is considered a “highly unusual loophole that may not have been readily apparent to career staff,” Politico noted.

Staffers told Politico that Gottumukkala’s tenure has been a “nightmare”—potentially ruining the careers of longtime CISA staffers. It troubles some that it seems that Gottumukkala will remain in his post “for the foreseeable future,” while seeming to politicize the agency and bungle protocols for accessing sensitive information.

According to Nextgov, Gottumukkala plans to right the ship with “a hiring spree in 2026 because its recent reductions have hampered some of the Trump administration’s national security goals.”

In November, the trade publication Cybersecurity Dive reported that Gottumukkala sent a memo confirming the hiring spree was coming that month, while warning that CISA remains “hampered by an approximately 40 percent vacancy rate across key mission areas.” All those cuts were “spurred by the administration’s animus toward CISA over its election security work,” Cybersecurity Dive noted.

“CISA must immediately accelerate recruitment, workforce development, and retention initiatives to ensure mission readiness and operational continuity,” Gottumukkala told staffers at that time, then later went on to reassure Congress this month that the agency has “the required staff” to protect election integrity and national security, Cyberscoop reported.

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

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DHS keeps trying and failing to unmask anonymous ICE critics online

censorship, DHS, First Amendment, ice, immigration and customs enforcement, Policy / Beth Washington / January 23, 2026

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has backed down from a fight to unmask the owners of Instagram and Facebook accounts monitoring Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity in Pennsylvania.

One of the anonymous account holders, John Doe, sued to block ICE from identifying him and other critics online through summonses to Meta that he claimed infringed on core First Amendment-protected activity.

DHS initially fought Doe’s motion to quash the summonses, arguing that the community watch groups endangered ICE agents by posting “pictures and videos of agents’ faces, license plates, and weapons, among other things.” This was akin to “threatening ICE agents to impede the performance of their duties,” DHS alleged. DHS’s arguments echoed DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, who has claimed that identifying ICE agents is a crime, even though Wired noted that ICE employees often post easily discoverable LinkedIn profiles.

To Doe, the agency seemed intent on testing the waters to see if it could seize authority to unmask all critics online by invoking a customs statute that allows agents to subpoena information on goods entering or leaving the US.

But then, on January 16, DHS abruptly reversed course, withdrawing its summonses from Meta.

A court filing confirmed that DHS dropped its requests for subscriber information last week, after initially demanding Doe’s “postal code, country, all email address(es) on file, date of account creation, registered telephone numbers, IP address at account signup, and logs showing IP address and date stamps for account accesses.”

The filing does not explain why DHS decided to withdraw its requests.

However, previously, DHS requested similar information from Meta about six Instagram community watch groups that shared information about ICE activity in Los Angeles and other locations. DHS withdrew those requests, too, after account holders defended their First Amendment rights and filed motions to quash their summonses, Doe’s court filing said.

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Lawsuit: DHS wants “unlimited subpoena authority” to unmask ICE critics

censorship, Department of Homeland Security, DHS, First Amendment, ice, Policy / Shannon Garcia / January 13, 2026

Defending online anonymity

DHS is weirdly using import/export rules to expand its authority to identify online critics.

A Border Patrol Tactical Unit agent sprays pepper spray into the face of a protestor attempting to block an immigration officer vehicle from leaving the scene where a woman was shot and killed by a federal agent earlier, in Minneapolis on January 7, 2026. Credit: Star Tribune via Getty Images / Contributor | Star Tribune

The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is fighting to unmask the owner of Facebook and Instagram accounts of a community watch group monitoring Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity in Pennsylvania.

Defending the right to post about ICE sightings anonymously is a Meta account holder for MontCo Community Watch, John Doe.

Doe has alleged that when the DHS sent a “summons” to Meta asking for subscriber information, it infringed on core First Amendment-protected activity, i.e., the right to publish content critical of government agencies and officials without fear of government retaliation. He also accused DHS of ignoring federal rules and seeking to vastly expand its authority to subpoena information to unmask ICE’s biggest critics online.

“I believe that my anonymity is the only thing standing between me and unfair and unjust persecution by the government of the United States,” Doe said in his complaint.

In response, DHS alleged that the community watch group that posted “pictures and videos of agents’ faces, license plates, and weapons, among other things,” was akin to “threatening ICE agents to impede the performance of their duties.” Claiming that the subpoena had nothing to do with silencing government critics, they argued that a statute regulating imports and exports empowered DHS to investigate the group’s alleged threats to “assault, kidnap, or murder” ICE agents.

DHS claims that Meta must comply with the subpoena because the government needs to investigate a “serious” threat “to the safety of its agents and the performance of their duties.”

On Wednesday, a US district judge will hear arguments to decide if Doe is right or if DHS can broadly unmask critics online by claiming it’s investigating supposed threats to ICE agents. With more power, DHS officials have confirmed they plan to criminally prosecute critics posting ICE videos online, Doe alleged in a lawsuit filed last October.

DHS seeking “unlimited subpoena authority”

DHS alleged that the community watch group posting “pictures and videos of agents’ faces, license plates, and weapons, among other things,” was akin to “threatening ICE agents to impede the performance of their duties.” Claiming that the subpoena had nothing to do with silencing government critics, they argued that DHS is authorized to investigate the group and that compelling interest supersedes Doe’s First Amendment rights.

According to Doe’s most recent court filing, DHS is pushing a broad reading of a statute that empowers DHS to subpoena information about the “importation/exportation of merchandise”—like records to determine duties owed or information to unmask a drug smuggler or child sex trafficker. DHS claims the statute isn’t just about imports and exports but also authorizes DHS to seize information about anyone they can tie to an investigation of potential crimes that violate US customs laws.

However, it seems to make no sense, Doe argued, that Congress would “silently embed unlimited subpoena authority in a provision keyed to the importation of goods.” Doe hopes the US district judge will agree that DHS’s summons was unconstitutional.

“The subscriber information for social media accounts publishing speech critical of ICE that DHS seeks is completely unrelated to the importation/exportation of merchandise; the records are outside the scope of DHS’s summons power,” Doe alleged.

And even if the court agrees on DHS’s reading of the statute, DHS has not established that unmasking the owner of the community watch accounts would be relevant to any legitimate criminal investigation, Doe alleged.

Doe’s posts were “pretty innocuous,” lawyer says

To convince the court that the case was really about chilling speech, Doe attached every post made on the group’s Facebook and Instagram feeds. None show threats or arguably implicit threats to “assault, kidnap, or murder any federal official,” as DHS claimed. Instead, the users shared “information and resources about immigrant rights, due process rights, fundraising, and vigils,” Doe said.

Ariel Shapell, an attorney representing Doe at the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, told Ars that “if you go and look at the content on the Facebook and Instagram profiles at issue here, it’s pretty innocuous.”

DHS claimed to have received information about the group supposedly “stalking and gathering of intelligence on federal agents involved in ICE operations.” However, Doe argued that “unsurprisingly, neither DHS nor its declarant cites any post even allegedly constituting any such threat. To the contrary, all posts on these social media accounts constitute speech addressing important public issues fully protected under the First Amendment,” Doe argued.

“Reporting on, or even livestreaming, publicly occurring immigration operations is fully protected First Amendment activity,” Doe argued. “DHS does not, and cannot, show how such conduct constitutes an assault, kidnapping, or murder of a federal law enforcement officer, or a threat to do any of those things.”

Anti-ICE backlash mounting amid ongoing protests

Doe’s motion to quash the subpoena arrives at a time when recent YouGov polling suggests that Americans have reached a tipping point in ending support for ICE. YouGov’s poll found more people disapprove of how ICE is handling its job than approve, following the aftermath of nationwide anti-ICE protests over Renee Good’s killing. ICE critics have used footage of tragic events—like Good’s death and eight other ICE shootings since September—to support calls to remove ICE from embattled communities and abolish ICE.

As sharing ICE footage has swayed public debate, DHS has seemingly sought to subpoena Meta and possibly other platforms for subscriber information.

In October, Meta refused to provide names of users associated with Doe’s accounts—as well as “postal code, country, all email address(es) on file, date of account creation, registered telephone numbers, IP address at account signup, and logs showing IP address and date stamps for account accesses”—without further information from DHS. Meta then gave Doe the opportunity to move to quash the subpoena to stop the company from sharing information.

That request came about a week after DHS requested similar information from Meta about six Instagram community watch groups that shared information about ICE activity in Los Angeles and other locations. DHS withdrew those requests after account holders defended First Amendment rights and filed motions to quash the subpoena, Doe’s court filing said.

It’s unclear why DHS withdrew those subpoenas but maintained Doe’s. DHS has alleged that the government’s compelling interest in Doe’s identity outweighs First Amendment rights to post anonymously online. The agency also claimed it has met its burden to unmask Doe as “someone who is allegedly involved in threatening ICE agents and impeding the performance of their duties,” which supposedly “touches DHS’s investigation into threats to ICE agents and impediments to the performance of their duties.”

Whether Doe will prevail is hard to say, but Politico reported that DHS’s “defense will rest on whether DHS’s argument that posting videos and images of ICE officers and warnings about arrests is considered criminal activity.” It may weaken DHS’s case that Border Patrol Tactical Commander Greg Bovino recently circulated a “legal refresher” for agents in the field, reminding them that protestors are allowed to take photos and videos of “an officer or operation in public,” independent journalist Ken Klippenstein reported.

Shapell told Ars that there seems to be “a lot of distance” between the content posted on Doe’s accounts and relevant evidence that could be used in DHS’s alleged investigation into criminal activity. And meanwhile, “there are just very clear First Amendment rights here to associate with other people anonymously online and to discuss political opinions online anonymously,” Shapell said, which the judge may strongly uphold as core protected activity as threats of government retaliation mount.

“These summonses chill people’s desire to communicate about these sorts of incredibly important developments on the Internet, even anonymously, when there’s a threat that they could be unmasked and investigated for this really core First Amendment protected activity,” Shapell said.

A win could reassure Meta users that they can continue posting about ICE online without fear of retaliation should Meta be pressed to share their information.

Ars could not immediately reach DHS for comment. Meta declined to comment, only linking Ars to an FAQ to help users understand how the platform processes government requests.

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

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DHS offers “disturbing new excuses” to seize kids’ biometric data, expert says

biometric data, cbp, customs and border protection, Department of Homeland Security, DHS, DNA testing, face scans, ice, iris scans, Policy, voice prints / Mike M. / November 6, 2025

Sweeping DHS power grab would collect face, iris, voice scans of all immigrants.

Civil and digital rights experts are horrified by a proposed rule change that would allow the Department of Homeland Security to collect a wide range of sensitive biometric data on all immigrants, without age restrictions, and store that data throughout each person’s “lifecycle” in the immigration system.

If adopted, the rule change would allow DHS agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), to broadly collect facial imagery, finger and palm prints, iris scans, and voice prints. They may also request DNA, which DHS claimed “would only be collected in limited circumstances,” like to verify family relations. These updates would cost taxpayers $288.7 million annually, DHS estimated, including $57.1 million for DNA collection alone. Annual individual charges to immigrants submitting data will likely be similarly high, estimated at around $231.5 million.

Costs could be higher, DHS admitted, especially if DNA testing is conducted more widely than projected.

“DHS does not know the full costs to the government of expanding biometrics collection in terms of assets, process, storage, labor, and equipment,” DHS’s proposal said, while noting that from 2020 to 2024, the US only processed such data from about 21 percent of immigrants on average.

Alarming critics, the update would allow DHS for the first time to collect biometric data of children under 14, which DHS claimed would help reduce human trafficking and other harms by making it easier to identify kids crossing the border unaccompanied or with a stranger.

Jennifer Lynch, general counsel for a digital rights nonprofit called the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Ars that EFF joined Democratic senators in opposing a prior attempt by DHS to expand biometric data collection in 2020.

There was so much opposition to that rule change that DHS ultimately withdrew it, Lynch noted, but DHS confirmed in its proposal that the agency expects more support for the much broader initiative under the current Trump administration. Quoting one of Trump’s earliest executive orders in this term, directing DHS to “secure the border,” DHS suggested it was the agency’s duty to use “any available technologies and procedures to determine the validity of any claimed familial relationship between aliens encountered or apprehended by the Department of Homeland Security.”

Lynch warned that DHS’s plan to track immigrants over time, starting as young as possible, would allow DHS “to track people without their knowledge as they go about their lives” and “map families and connections in whole communities over time.”

“This expansion poses grave threats to the privacy, security, and liberty of US citizens and non-citizens,” Lynch told Ars, noting that “the federal government, including DHS, has failed to protect biometric data in the past.”

“Risks from security breaches to children’s biometrics are especially acute,” she said. “Large numbers of children are already victims of identity theft.”

By maintaining a database, the US also risks chilling speech, as immigrants weigh risks of social media comments—which DHS already monitors—possibly triggering removals or arrests.

“People will be less likely to speak out on any issue for fear of being tracked and facing severe reprisals, like detention and deportation, that we’ve already seen from this administration,” Lynch told Ars.

DHS also wants to collect more biometric data on US citizens and permanent residents who sponsor immigrants or have familial ties. Esha Bhandari, director of the ACLU’s speech, privacy, and technology project, told Ars that “we should all be concerned that the Trump administration is potentially building a vast database of people’s sensitive, unchangeable information, as this will have serious privacy consequences for citizens and noncitizens alike.”

“DHS continues to explore disturbing new excuses to collect more DNA and other sensitive biometric information, from the sound of our voice to the unique identifiers in our irises,” Bhandari said.

EFF previously noted that DHS’s biometric database was already the second largest in the world. By expanding it, DHS estimated that the agency would collect “about 1.12 million more biometrics submissions” annually, increasing the current baseline to about 3.19 million.

As the data pool expands, DHS plans to hold onto the data until an immigrant who has requested benefits or otherwise engaged with DHS agencies is either granted citizenship or removed.

Lynch suggested that “DHS cites questionable authority for this massive change to its practices,” which would “exponentially expand the federal government’s ability to collect biometrics from anyone associated with any immigration benefit or request—including US citizens and children of any age.”

“Biometrics are unique to each of us and can’t be changed, so these threats exists as long as the government holds onto our data,” Lynch said.

DHS will collect more data on kids than adults

Not all agencies will require all forms of biometric data to be submitted “instantly” if the rule change goes through, DHS said. Instead, agencies will assess their individual needs, while supposedly avoiding repetitive data collection, so that data won’t be collected every time someone is required to fill out a form.

DHS said it “recognizes” that its sweeping data collection plans that remove age restrictions don’t conform with Department of Justice policies. But the agency claimed there was no conflict since “DHS regulatory provisions control all DHS biometrics collections” and “DHS is not authorized to operate or collect biometrics under DOJ authorities.”

“Using biometrics for identity verification and management” is necessary, DHS claimed, because it “will assist DHS’s efforts to combat trafficking, confirm the results of biographical criminal history checks, and deter fraud.”

Currently, DHS is seeking public comments on the rule change, which can be submitted over the next 60 days ahead of a deadline on January 2, 2026. The agency suggests it “welcomes” comments, particularly on the types of biometric data DHS wants to collect, including concerns about the “reliability of technology.”

If approved, DHS said that kids will likely be subjected to more biometric data collection than adults. Additionally, younger kids will be subjected to processes that DHS formerly limited to only children age 14 and over.

For example, DHS noted that previously, “policies, procedures, and practices in place at that time” restricted DHS from running criminal background checks on children.

However, DHS claims that’s now appropriate, including in cases where children were trafficked or are seeking benefits under the Violence Against Women Act and, therefore, are expected to prove “good moral character.”

“Generally, DHS plans to use the biometric information collected from children for identity management in the immigration lifecycle only, but will retain the authority for other uses in its discretion, such as background checks and for law enforcement purposes,” DHS’s proposal said.

The changes will also help protect kids from removals, DHS claimed, by making it easier for an ICE attorney to complete required “identity, law enforcement, or security investigations or examinations.” As DHS explained:

DHS proposes to collect biometrics at any age to ensure the immigration records created for children can be related to their adult records later, and to help combat child trafficking, smuggling, and labor exploitation by facilitating identity verification, while also confirming the absence of criminal history or associations with terrorist organizations or gang membership.

A top priority appears to be tracking kids’ family relationships.

“DHS’s ability to collect biometrics, including DNA, regardless of a minor’s age, will allow DHS to accurately prove or disprove claimed genetic relationships among apprehended aliens and ensure that unaccompanied alien children (UAC) are properly identified and cared for,” the proposal said.

But DHS acknowledges that biometrics won’t help in some situations, like where kids are adopted. In those cases, DHS will still rely on documentation like birth certificates, medical records, and “affidavits to support claims based on familial relationships.”

It’s possible that some DHS agencies may establish an age threshold for some data collection, the rule change noted.

A day after the rule change was proposed, 42 comments have been submitted. Most were critical, but as Lynch warned, speaking out seemed risky, with many choosing to anonymously criticize the initiative as violating people’s civil rights and making the US appear more authoritarian.

One anonymous user cited guidance from the ACLU and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, while warning that “what starts as a ‘biometrics update’ could turn into widespread privacy erosion for immigrants and citizens alike.”

The commenter called out DHS for seriously “talking about harvesting deeply personal data that could track someone forever” and subjecting “infants and toddlers” to “iris scans or DNA swabs.”

“You pitch it as a tool against child trafficking, which is a real issue, but does swabbing a newborn really help, or does it just create a lifelong digital profile starting at day one?” the commenter asked. “Accuracy for growing kids is questionable, and the [ACLU] has pointed out how this disproportionately burdens families. Imagine the hassle for parents—it’s not protection; it’s preemptively treating every child like a data point in a government file.”

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

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The DHS has been quietly harvesting DNA from Americans for years

Crime database, DHS, DNA, fbi, genetic fingerprinting, Policy, privacy, syndicatin, syndication / DJ Henderson / September 24, 2025

The DNA of nearly 2,000 US citizens has been entered into an FBI crime database.

For years, Customs and Border Protection agents have been quietly harvesting DNA from American citizens, including minors, and funneling the samples into an FBI crime database, government data shows. This expansion of genetic surveillance was never authorized by Congress for citizens, children, or civil detainees.

According to newly released government data analyzed by Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy & Technology, the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees CBP, collected the DNA of nearly 2,000 US citizens between 2020 and 2024 and had it sent to CODIS, the FBI’s nationwide system for policing investigations. An estimated 95 were minors, some as young as 14. The entries also include travelers never charged with a crime and dozens of cases where agents left the “charges” field blank. In other files, officers invoked civil penalties as justification for swabs that federal law reserves for criminal arrests.

The findings appear to point to a program running outside the bounds of statute or oversight, experts say, with CBP officers exercising broad discretion to capture genetic material from Americans and have it funneled into a law-enforcement database designed in part for convicted offenders. Critics warn that anyone added to the database could endure heightened scrutiny by US law enforcement for life.

“Those spreadsheets tell a chilling story,” Stevie Glaberson, director of research and advocacy at Georgetown’s Center on Privacy & Technology, tells WIRED. “They show DNA taken from people as young as 4 and as old as 93—and, as our new analysis found, they also show CBP flagrantly violating the law by taking DNA from citizens without justification.”

DHS did not respond to a request for comment.

For more than two decades, the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, has been billed as a tool for violent crime investigations. But under both recent policy changes and the Trump administration’s immigration agenda, the system has become a catchall repository for genetic material collected far outside the criminal justice system.

One of the sharpest revelations came from DHS data released earlier this year showing that CBP and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement have been systematically funneling cheek swabs from immigrants—and, in many cases, US citizens—into CODIS. What was once a program aimed at convicted offenders now sweeps in children at the border, families questioned at airports, and people held on civil—not criminal—grounds. WIRED previously reported that DNA from minors as young as 4 had ended up in the FBI’s database, alongside elderly people in their 90s, with little indication of how or why the samples were taken.

The scale is staggering. According to Georgetown researchers, DHS has contributed roughly 2.6 million profiles to CODIS since 2020—far above earlier projections and a surge that has reshaped the database. By December 2024, CODIS’s “detainee” index contained over 2.3 million profiles; by April 2025, the figure had already climbed to more than 2.6 million. Nearly all of these samples—97 percent—were collected under civil, not criminal, authority. At the current pace, according to Georgetown Law’s estimates, which are based on DHS projections, Homeland Security files alone could account for one-third of CODIS by 2034.

The expansion has been driven by specific legal and bureaucratic levers. Foremost was an April 2020 Justice Department rule that revoked a long-standing waiver allowing DHS to skip DNA collection from immigration detainees, effectively green-lighting mass sampling. Later that summer, the FBI signed off on rules that let police booking stations run arrestee cheek swabs through Rapid DNA machines—automated devices that can spit out CODIS-ready profiles in under two hours.

The strain of the changes became apparent in subsequent years. Former FBI director Christopher Wray warned during Senate testimony in 2023 that the flood of DNA samples from DHS threatened to overwhelm the bureau’s systems. The 2020 rule change, he said, had pushed the FBI from a historic average of a few thousand monthly submissions to 92,000 per month—over 10 times its traditional intake. The surge, he cautioned, had created a backlog of roughly 650,000 unprocessed kits, raising the risk that people detained by DHS could be released before DNA checks produced investigative leads.

Under Trump’s renewed executive order on border enforcement, signed in January 2025, DHS agencies were instructed to deploy “any available technologies” to verify family ties and identity, a directive that explicitly covers genetic testing. This month, federal officials announced they were soliciting new bids to install Rapid DNA at local booking facilities around the country, with combined awards of up to $3 million available.

“The Department of Homeland Security has been piloting a secret DNA collection program of American citizens since 2020. Now, the training wheels have come off,” said Anthony Enriquez, vice president of advocacy at Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights. “In 2025, Congress handed DHS a $178 billion check, making it the nation’s costliest law enforcement agency, even as the president gutted its civil rights watchdogs and the Supreme Court repeatedly signed off on unconstitutional tactics.”

Oversight bodies and lawmakers have raised alarms about the program. As early as 2021, the DHS inspector general found the department lacked central oversight of DNA collection and that years of noncompliance can undermine public safety—echoing an earlier rebuke from the Office of Special Counsel, which called CBP’s failures an “unacceptable dereliction.”

US Senator Ron Wyden (D-Kans.) more recently pressed DHS and DOJ for explanations about why children’s DNA is being captured and whether CODIS has any mechanism to reject improperly obtained samples, saying the program was never intended to collect and permanently retain the DNA of all noncitizens, warning the children are likely to be “treated by law enforcement as suspects for every investigation of every future crime, indefinitely.”

Rights advocates allege that CBP’s DNA collection program has morphed into a sweeping genetic surveillance regime, with samples from migrants and even US citizens fed into criminal databases absent transparency, legal safeguards, or limits on retention. Georgetown’s privacy center points out that once DHS creates and uploads a CODIS profile, the government retains the physical DNA sample indefinitely, with no procedure to revisit or remove profiles when the legality of the detention is in doubt.

In parallel, Georgetown and allied groups have sued DHS over its refusal to fully release records about the program, highlighting how little the public knows about how DNA is being used, stored, or shared once it enters CODIS.

Taken together, these revelations may suggest a quiet repurposing of CODIS. A system long described as a forensic breakthrough is being remade into a surveillance archive—sweeping up immigrants, travelers, and US citizens alike, with few checks on the agents deciding whose DNA ends up in the federal government’s most intimate database.

“There’s much we still don’t know about DHS’s DNA collection activities,” Georgetown’s Glaberson says. “We’ve had to sue the agencies just to get them to do their statutory duty, and even then they’ve flouted court orders. The public has a right to know what its government is up to, and we’ll keep fighting to bring this program into the light.”

This story originally appeared on wired.com.

Wired.com is your essential daily guide to what’s next, delivering the most original and complete take you’ll find anywhere on innovation’s impact on technology, science, business and culture.

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Critics question tech-heavy lineup of new Homeland Security AI safety board

AI, AI ethics, AI safety, alphabet, Amazon, Anthropic, Biz & IT, DHS, Dr. Margaret Mitchell, executive order, Google, Joe Biden, machine learning, Meta, microsoft, NVIDIA, openai, Policy, President Biden, sam altman, Satya Nadella, Sundar Pichai / Shannon Garcia / April 30, 2024

Adventures in 21st century regulation —

CEO-heavy board to tackle elusive AI safety concept and apply it to US infrastructure.

Benj Edwards – Apr 29, 2024 8: 15 pm UTC

A modified photo of a 1956 scientist carefully bottling

On Friday, the US Department of Homeland Security announced the formation of an Artificial Intelligence Safety and Security Board that consists of 22 members pulled from the tech industry, government, academia, and civil rights organizations. But given the nebulous nature of the term “AI,” which can apply to a broad spectrum of computer technology, it’s unclear if this group will even be able to agree on what exactly they are safeguarding us from.

President Biden directed DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to establish the board, which will meet for the first time in early May and subsequently on a quarterly basis.

The fundamental assumption posed by the board’s existence, and reflected in Biden’s AI executive order from October, is that AI is an inherently risky technology and that American citizens and businesses need to be protected from its misuse. Along those lines, the goal of the group is to help guard against foreign adversaries using AI to disrupt US infrastructure; develop recommendations to ensure the safe adoption of AI tech into transportation, energy, and Internet services; foster cross-sector collaboration between government and businesses; and create a forum where AI leaders to share information on AI security risks with the DHS.

It’s worth noting that the ill-defined nature of the term “Artificial Intelligence” does the new board no favors regarding scope and focus. AI can mean many different things: It can power a chatbot, fly an airplane, control the ghosts in Pac-Man, regulate the temperature of a nuclear reactor, or play a great game of chess. It can be all those things and more, and since many of those applications of AI work very differently, there’s no guarantee any two people on the board will be thinking about the same type of AI.

This confusion is reflected in the quotes provided by the DHS press release from new board members, some of whom are already talking about different types of AI. While OpenAI, Microsoft, and Anthropic are monetizing generative AI systems like ChatGPT based on large language models (LLMs), Ed Bastian, the CEO of Delta Air Lines, refers to entirely different classes of machine learning when he says, “By driving innovative tools like crew resourcing and turbulence prediction, AI is already making significant contributions to the reliability of our nation’s air travel system.”

So, defining the scope of what AI exactly means—and which applications of AI are new or dangerous—might be one of the key challenges for the new board.

A roundtable of Big Tech CEOs attracts criticism

For the inaugural meeting of the AI Safety and Security Board, the DHS selected a tech industry-heavy group, populated with CEOs of four major AI vendors (Sam Altman of OpenAI, Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Sundar Pichai of Alphabet, and Dario Amodei of Anthopic), CEO Jensen Huang of top AI chipmaker Nvidia, and representatives from other major tech companies like IBM, Adobe, Amazon, Cisco, and AMD. There are also reps from big aerospace and aviation: Northrop Grumman and Delta Air Lines.

Upon reading the announcement, some critics took issue with the board composition. On LinkedIn, founder of The Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR) Timnit Gebru especially criticized OpenAI’s presence on the board and wrote, “I’ve now seen the full list and it is hilarious. Foxes guarding the hen house is an understatement.”

Critics question tech-heavy lineup of new Homeland Security AI safety board Read More »