Big Brother Is Watching Your Online Criticism of ICE Crackdowns

When it can be assumed that you are being surveilled while expressing negative opinion about the federal government, it’s probably best to go ahead and make the assumption, particularly during the punitive heights of the second Donald Trump administration. New reporting from the Associated Press this weekend detailed some aspects of not only United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) latest anti-immigrant and deportation campaign in New Orleans, but also some interesting insights into how both the federal and state law enforcement agencies involved have been engaged in online surveillance campaigns to track public sentiment toward that crackdown. The story paints a chilling profile of a United States in which dissent against the regime’s campaign of immigrant-targeted cruelty is being carefully compiled, filed away for the potential of future use against American citizens. Not that any of this should be a surprise for any of us.

We have, after all, been warned over and over that organizations like ICE have been wanting to vastly expand their online operations, using the same vastly expanded budget that recently saw them purchase a new $7.3 million fleet of (Canadian made) armored vehicles. The online expansion of ICE, meanwhile, is not just in the name of locating more groups of undocumented immigrants to target, but also to compile sprawling digital enemies lists, creating databases of those who have expressed anti-ICE sentiment. Earlier this year, The Intercept wrote about surveillance contractors sought by ICE, who would be expected to perform algorithm- and AI-aided deep dives into social media users’ post histories, searching for, among other things, “proclivity for violence,” which could include “empathy with a group which has violent tendencies,” among other things. Hope you haven’t expressed “empathy” at any point for any group with “violent tendencies,” right? How does it feel to know that you’d be at the mercy of a freelance surveillance contractor’s mastery of “social and behavioral sciences” and “psychological profiles,” according to ICE’s statement of objectives?

How much of these draconian operations have already been implemented isn’t entirely clear thanks to the shroud of secrecy surrounding the DHS and ICE, but fresh reporting in October noted that ICE was in the process of seeking an additional 30 full-time surveillance contractors to staff two of its “targeting centers”–and yes, that is apparently the official, deeply dystopian term for these facilities. These facilities, in Williston, VT and Santa Ana, CA, would run 24/7 shifts as surveillance analysts “receive tips and incoming cases, research individuals online, and package the results into dossiers that could be used by field offices to plan arrests.” The obvious question: How long until the same resources are being used to target those critical of ICE, or those organizing to impede ICE crackdown efforts, under the guise of “interference with law enforcement operations”? It should also be noted that even if ICE isn’t directly targeting those individuals yet, the unspoken threat of this kind of online surveillance could be intended to have a chilling effect on anti-ICE criticism.

In New Orleans, the recently begun operation named “Catahoula Crunch” began making its first arrests and detainments last week, with the Associated Press reviewing law enforcement records detailing how both the FBI and Customs and Border Protection have stationed their own agents at the state’s Louisiana State Analytical and Fusion Exchange, a data-sharing center used by state law enforcement to monitor online activity. There, agents are compiling briefings on public sentiment toward the ICE raids in the city, with various briefings noting that locals posting on social media networks such as Reddit have (shockingly) been accusing “agents of racially profiling Hispanic areas specifically,” or claiming that agents “are not keeping with the mission of targeting criminal immigrants only.” What exactly is ICE planning to do with this information? How negative is “sentiment” allowed to be before the critics need a crackdown of their own? The story notes that the fusion center has been tasked with, among other things, tracking “the tools used by protesters to foil immigration enforcement, highlighting social media links to whistle handouts, trainings on filming federal agents and the emergence of a hotline for reporting arrests.”

Which is to say: When the federal government is tracking people handing out whistles, what exactly is it not tracking?

Specific incidents in New Orleans have already been drawing the special ire of protestors and demonstrators. Particularly notable is the attempted detainment of 23-year-old U.S. citizen Jacelynn Guzman, a young woman who was walking back to her home from the grocery store on Wednesday of last week when she was accosted by not one but two trucks full of mask-wearing, plainclothes agents. Security video captured Guzman scrambling to evade the group of men, running down the sidewalk and bolting into her home, where she was thankfully protected by her stepfather, Juan Anglin, who emerged from the house to berate the agents, who quickly piled into their vehicles and retreated. The Department of Homeland Security later claimed (without offering specific evidence) that Border Patrol agents in this specific case had been searching for a “criminal illegal alien previously charged with felony theft” who happened to match Guzman’s description, and that agents left when they determined that she was not the person they were looking for. Shockingly, the stepfather isn’t buying that, and said his family member had been stopped solely because of her appearance–and likely because she was walking alone, presenting an easy target for detainment: “Just because you look brown, you look Hispanic, you’re going to get stopped,” Anglin said to the AP. “Because now it doesn’t matter if you have papers, you speak English or you are a citizen, it’s not enough.” One can’t help but wonder what kind of social media dossiers are being built by federal agents about this man, or the online response to this incident, as we speak.

Video shows masked Border Patrol agent chasing woman back to her Louisiana home

Jacelynn Guzman said she is a U.S.-born citizen. The Department of Homeland Security said Friday that it “determined the individual in question was not the target.”

www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news…

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— Lauren Ashley Davis (@laurenmeidasa.bsky.social) Dec 7, 2025 at 9:56 AM

At times, reading these reports, you can’t help but shake your head at how close they’ll sometimes come to self awareness of the pain and misery that is being inflicted by the operations. The AP report doesn’t particularly highlight what ultimately stands out as its most damning quote, from one of the briefings being compiled via online surveillance. Speaking about those who support DHS and ICE efforts in the immigration crackdowns, the agent goes out of their way to note that even those supporters have difficulty struggling with the cognitive dissonance of knowing that they’re bringing suffering on real, vulnerable human beings: “For some supporters, the videos with sounds of children crying in the background as their parents are placed under arrest, is weighing heavy on their hearts.”

That is … yikes. Rarely does such a perfectly rendered “Are we the baddies?” moment get captured online. What was the agent thinking, as they noted that yeah, people generally find it disturbing to watch parents be dragged away from their wailing children? Were they questioning their chosen field of employment? Were they disturbed by the governmental overreach of an administration seeking to weaponize the internet to carry out a campaign of targeted xenophobic discrimination? Or did they simply shove down those feelings of empathy and move on to the next dossier of a person speaking critically of ICE? I think we sadly know which is most likely.