ICE Finds a New Way to Dodge Congress About a Secret Protester Database

In response to lawmakers’ ongoing questions about ICE’s surveillance practices, a previously unpublicized letter to Congress reveals Homeland Security officials are taking an increasingly evasive approach when asked if the Trump administration created a database of protesters labeled as “domestic terrorists.”

The administration has repeatedly denied that DHS maintains a specific database of US citizens who protest ICE operations or photograph federal agents. But this letter, which was addressed on May 22 and comes amid mounting litigation over ICE’s alleged intimidation of protesters, appears to sidestep the question of a standalone protester database entirely.

“ICE does not independently approve adding individuals or entities to the U.S. government’s Terrorist Screening Dataset (TSDS),” John Cooper, Assistant Director of ICE’s Office of Congressional Relations, wrote in response to a February inquiry from Sen. Ed Markey (D, Mass.).

The TSDS is a publicly known, interagency terrorist watchlist that is not maintained by ICE and was not the subject of Markey’s questioning. The letter is the first time ICE has publicly mentioned the TSDS in response to questions about a potential protester database.

DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In February, Todd Lyons, then-acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, appeared before the House Homeland Security Committee and testified emphatically that ICE was not surveilling US citizens.

“There is no database for protesters, sir,” Lyons told Rep. Lou Correa (D, Calif.), who asked Lyons about threats ICE agents made on camera to legal observers in Maine. “I can assure you there is no database that’s tracking United States citizens.”

“The public deserves clear and consistent answers about ICE’s surveillance activities and its infringement of Americans’ civil liberties.”

Lyons echoed these statements again in an April 21 letter to Rep. Maxwell Alejandro Frost (D, Fla.). But this time, he added a caveat for law enforcement investigations: “Where individuals decide to go beyond protected speech and commit crimes against federal personnel and property or threaten, or forcibly impede, assault, or interfere with lawful operations, ICE remains steadfast in exercising its authority to investigate and prosecute violators.” Put simply, Lyons denied that ICE was keeping a “separate, standalone database” of protesters, but admitted the agency had “collected information” on citizens suspected of breaking federal law.

These carve-outs were already broad and vaguely defined enough to raise concerns among civil liberties advocates. Now, while evading Markey’s specific questions about an ICE database, Cooper’s letter raises new concerns that anti-ICE protesters and legal observers are, in fact, being added to the TSDS based on so-called “antifa” activity.

Cooper’s May letter went on to cite a “whole-of-government process,” administered by the FBI, in which nominations to the TSDS are reviewed and approved “based on federal criteria derived from statutory definitions of terrorism.” Notably, President Trump designated “antifa”, which is not a single group and generally defined as anyone who is against fascism, as a domestic terrorist organization in September. And in May, as my colleague Sophie Hurwitz reported at the time, the White House released a new counterterrorism playbook that “prioritize[s] the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist.”

Today, in a letter to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Acting ICE Director David Venturella, shared exclusively with Mother Jones, Markey and Rep. Frost are demanding answers.

“ICE’s shifting and carefully worded responses prevent Congress and the public from determining the extent of ICE’s surveillance activities,” Markey and Frost wrote. They pressed Mullin and Venturella on whether “DHS, ICE, or any component agency of DHS” is “maintaining their own database, list, or record of individuals engaged in protest activity, outside of the TSDS” or creating any “record of individuals identified as threats to officer or facility safety, including those who have not been accused of any crime.” The congressmen also requested a copy of an internal ICE memo, first reported by CNN in January, that instructed agents to “capture all images, license plates, identifications, and general information on hotels, agitators, protestors, etc.” for inclusion in a “consolidated form.”

“These attempts to evade congressional oversight are unacceptable,” Markey and Frost wrote. “The public deserves clear and consistent answers about ICE’s surveillance activities and its infringement of Americans’ civil liberties.”