Key Takeaways:
ICE has deployed a round-the-clock digital dragnet that has ensnared U.S. citizens for criticizing immigration agents, spending $258 million on surveillance in the past year.
ICE's surveillance spending jumped 57 percent to $258 million in the first full year of the Trump administration, as the agency deployed private contractors to scour social media and subpoenaed companies to unmask anonymous critics of immigration enforcement. The figure compares with $164.5 million in the prior year, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of federal budget data.
"As far as I can tell, all of this is about people saying naughty things about ICE and immigration enforcement," said Lauren Regan, a civil-rights attorney who has represented multiple people investigated by the government over their online speech, including a Reddit user known as Tired_Thumb. "Nothing that comes close to true threats."
ICE has inked at least six contracts worth nearly $50 million since 2020 to scan public records for threats, with more than half of those funds obligated since last January. The agency's Office of Professional Responsibility investigated at least 131 incidents of doxxing and threats toward personnel between January 2025 and March 2026, according to a court declaration filed in April. The monitoring initiative covers nearly 20 social platforms, including Reddit, Discord, Snapchat and LinkedIn, and uses machine learning for what the agency calls "anticipatory threat intelligence."
The program has ensnared U.S. citizens and activist groups that alert communities about ICE activity, with DHS sending hundreds of administrative and grand jury subpoenas to social-media companies. The Wall Street Journal identified 10 people who pushed back against the unmasking attempts; judges have upheld four grand jury subpoenas, the agency abandoned three cases, and three remain pending. No charges have been filed in any of them.
DHS said it is trying to protect agents and their families from "coordinated campaigns of violence" that have fueled an 8,000 percent increase in death threats since Trump took office. An agency spokesperson said ICE's methods abide by the Constitution and that "any allegation DHS and ICE are attempting to 'squash' free speech is categorically FALSE."
Civil-rights lawyers and former DHS staffers counter that the dragnet sweeps up speech the Supreme Court has protected. The high court has held that true threats fall outside the Constitution but that political hyperbole is shielded, noting the "language of the political arena" is often "vituperative, abusive, and inexact." Sharing a federal officer's personal information is generally not a crime without evidence of criminal intent, a historically high bar.
Reddit objected to all 11 administrative subpoenas DHS issued for accounts that posted "content critical of federal actions" between July and December, and the agency withdrew them. "Privacy is central to how Reddit operates," said Ben Lee, the company's chief legal officer, adding that it routinely objects to requests that are "overbroad or threaten users' privacy or civil rights."
To build the dragnet, the Office of Professional Responsibility turned to Amivero, a Virginia-based technology firm that secured a contract worth more than $8 million last September to monitor social media for threats and plans to interfere with ICE enforcement. Amivero subcontracted the work to Guidehouse, a global consulting firm. The most recent awards call for contractors to help geolocate individuals labeled "extremists" and cross-reference information with government databases, with one award potentially worth up to $50 million.
The initiative generated so many potential threats that the small-staffed office enlisted the HSI Office of Intelligence to handle the volume. Oversight has thinned: the ICE Privacy Office is down to two full-time staffers, according to former government employees. Attorneys said subpoenas for U.S. citizens' information spiked around September 2025, the month the threat contract launched.
The stakes extend beyond the individuals visited by agents. Agents have tracked down Americans at work and on the road, asking them to sign letters acknowledging their online speech about ICE "may" be a crime. "We're seeing the weaponization of privacy in ways that privilege the powerful, and in particular, law enforcement," said Danielle Citron, a law professor at the University of Virginia who specializes in cyberstalking and civil rights. With no charges filed in the contested cases, defense attorneys argue the program functions as intimidation rather than prosecution. "If they just want to use this as an intimidation tactic, it's not even a fair fight," Regan said.
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