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Door staff@engadget.com (Jackson Chen) - 03 Oct 2026
As revealed by unsealed court documents, Department of Homeland Security agents are allegedly creating dossiers on those that are accused of observing or protesting Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. As first reported by Wired, these DHS files on protestors reportedly include sensitive info like photos and license plate numbers and are stored in a database built by Palantir called Investigative Case Management.
The new information comes from a partially unsealed court filing about a January ICE operation that took place in Maine, according to Wired. The filing is part of a class action lawsuit, which led to a redacted version becoming available to the public on Friday and revealing the purported database of ICE protestors.
According to the lawsuit, DHS agents would track and intimidate observers or protestors, sometimes by driving by their homes or labeling them as "Threat to Law Enforcement, Professional Protestor." In one example, an agent reportedly called one of the plaintiffs on her cell and suggested that she tell her spouse "not to do anything like that in the future because people who are doing things like that might get added to a domestic terrorism watchlist."
The lawyers representing the plaintiffs said that this sort of database creates a chilling effect on the First Amendment rights of protestors. On the other side, a DHS spokesperson told Wired that the case was "meritless" and denied the existence of such a database that labels and tracks "domestic terrorists."
The new information comes from a partially unsealed court filing about a January ICE operation that took place in Maine, according to Wired. The filing is part of a class action lawsuit, which led to a redacted version becoming available to the public on Friday and revealing the purported database of ICE protestors.
According to the lawsuit, DHS agents would track and intimidate observers or protestors, sometimes by driving by their homes or labeling them as "Threat to Law Enforcement, Professional Protestor." In one example, an agent reportedly called one of the plaintiffs on her cell and suggested that she tell her spouse "not to do anything like that in the future because people who are doing things like that might get added to a domestic terrorism watchlist."
The lawyers representing the plaintiffs said that this sort of database creates a chilling effect on the First Amendment rights of protestors. On the other side, a DHS spokesperson told Wired that the case was "meritless" and denied the existence of such a database that labels and tracks "domestic terrorists."