Snitching on ICE Goes Mainstream

Dominick Skinner’s Irish brogue crackled on the other end of a staticky, encrypted Signal call. He told me that he is in his 30s and lives in the Netherlands, where he writes a Substack newsletter and fields tips from all over the world for his new website, called ICE List. Its mission is simple: Publish the names, photos, and social media profile links of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in the U.S., more than 4,000 miles away.

Even though he is not American, Skinner sees his “accountability project” as a way to fight fascism from afar. “If we look back at history and ask what we could have done better against Hitler, or what we could have done better when Mussolini came around, the reality is that Germans and Italians couldn’t have done much, but people could have done more from the outside,” said Skinner.

Launched in mid-June, ICE List has posted information on about 50 ICE agents and local law enforcement officers. One person described as a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol photographer is labeled a “propagandist.” A donation page shows contributors—and messages ranging from “Keep crushing ICE!” to “They won’t stay hidden for long!”

This is the newest battleground in America’s war over immigration. The dramatic escalation in arrests—as President Donald Trump pushes to deport one million illegal immigrants by the end of this year—is fueling grassroots efforts aimed at thwarting ICE everywhere it goes.

Skinner is hardly alone. What began as a frenzy of ad hoc social media posts has turned into apps, hotlines, neighborhood-focused groups on Nextdoor, and websites like People Over Papers, which are allegedly trying to expose the identities and locations of ICE agents—and even the hotels where they are staying, to provoke protests and shame the hotel operators.

In Boston, the LUCE Immigrant Justice Network of Massachusetts operates the ICE Watch Hotline, staffed by volunteers from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. seven days a week. Volunteers are dispatched to the scene of reported ICE sightings. In March, a hotline tip alerted the group to the arrest of Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish graduate student at Tufts University, by a team of masked ICE agents on a Somerville street. The group got video of the arrest, which made headlines around the world. Öztürk was released from federal custody after six weeks.

Sherman Austin, a software engineer in California, has raised nearly $25,000 through a GoFundMe page to build and run Stop ICE Alerts, which sends text messages triggered by photos and videos that are uploaded to the website. A description of one sighting last week said: “Ice agents appear to be staying at the four points sheraton in rancho cucamonga.” Someone replied: “Get some ppl together and make noise. no sleep for ice.”

“It’s not doxxing,” said Skinner, who told me that the eventual goal of ICE List is to hold accountable those responsible for the crimes of the Trump “regime,” as he calls it, once Trump’s presidential term ends. (Skinner was the only operator of a snitch-on-ICE site that was willing to talk to me.)

These efforts to out ICE agents seem to be largely a nuisance so far, rather than a serious impediment to the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigrants. The Department of Homeland Security told The Free Press in mid-June that the government has made an average of 1,560 arrests per day since late April, up from an average of about 1,300 a day during the first four months of the year. An increasing percentage of those arrested do not have a criminal conviction.

To some extent, though, sites like ICE List are foiling some arrests—or at least making them more difficult. One ICE official, whose photo was posted on ICE List, said that while he was working in Boston recently, protesters found out the enforcement team’s location and began yelling to alert any illegal immigrants. In a video provided by the ICE official, a masked protester points at the car and yells, “These guys are immigration! They’re fucking kidnapping people off the street!”

“We had to leave,” the ICE official told The Free Press. He said the agents had been waiting outside the home of an illegal immigrant who is an alleged murderer. The same ICE official said that one of his tires was slashed while he was inside a courthouse conducting an arrest.

There are signs that the Trump administration’s annoyance toward the sites is leading the government to go after them. Last week, Attorney General Pam Bondi warned the creator of ICEBlock, an app that calls itself the Waze of ICE sightings, to “watch out.” “He’s giving a message to criminals where our federal officers are. He cannot do that. We are looking at it [and] we are looking at him,” she said.

Skinner told me that his first ICE List website was removed by the web-hosting company Bluehost after just two weeks. The company cited its right to “refuse service to anyone at our sole discretion,” according to a document reviewed by The Free Press. He had a new website running within two days, but it was inaccessible by the middle of last week. Skinner said the U.S. had blocked it. A new site was up as of Sunday.

Andrew Arthur, a former immigration judge who is now a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, said that the anti-ICE apps, websites, and hotlines might be legally vulnerable under a federal law that bans “two or more persons” from conspiring to “prevent, by force, intimidation, or threat . . . any officer of the United States” from doing their job. “The argument could be made that they’re telling foreign nationals and any would-be bad actors where ICE is located,” Arthur said. Impeding or interfering with a federal law enforcement officer is also a crime.

ICE agents told me that they have gotten used to smartphones being pointed at them. “This is part of the reason that my agents are empowered to wear masks, because now people have cameras, and people will follow you,” said Elhrick Cerdan, assistant special agent in charge for the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) office in Omaha, Nebraska. HSI is part of ICE.

Cerdan led last month’s raid at Glenn Valley Foods, a meatpacking plant in Omaha. The Free Press reported that about 70 illegal immigrants were arrested for working with fraudulent or stolen Social Security numbers. Some of the protesters who converged at the plant during the raid threw rocks at law enforcement agents and damaged their cars. “I’ve had to do countersurveillance on my way home to make sure I’m not followed by protesters. It’s very scary,” Cerdan said.

Senator Marsha Blackburn, a Republican from Tennessee, proposed a bill last month that would make it illegal to publish the name of any federal law enforcement officer “with the intent to obstruct a criminal investigation or immigration operation.” More than 35 Democrats in the House introduced a bill that would require ICE agents to leave their faces uncovered and wear clear identification and insignia whenever they detain or arrest anyone.

HSI reported 79 attacks on ICE agents during operations from January to June of this year, up from 10 the previous year.

Skinner said he has no sympathy for ICE agents. “They shouldn’t have taken a job in an industry that is worldwide famous for being a terrorist institution against their own population,” he said. ICE List receives hundreds of tips per day, Skinner added, along with encouraging messages from people all over the world.

As part of the Big Beautiful Bill just passed by Congress and signed into law by President Trump, ICE will be able to increase the number of special agents it has beyond the current 6,000 and will receive nearly $60 billion to expand detention facilities and bolster deportation operations.

No matter how many apps are tracking immigration arrests, interest in joining HSI is sky high, Cerdan told me. “We’re full, and I have a pipeline of potential applicants here, including student interns,” he said.