The Easy Way To Help Us Identify ICE Agents
Every week, our volunteers spend hours piecing together fragments of information from videos, social posts, and scattered eyewitness accounts, this work has led to the identification of over 300 ICE agents, staff and collaborators. Our team cross-reference dates, verify locations, and try to determine which agents were involved in each encounter. That groundwork, the quiet, meticulous labor behind every incident we log, is what makes the ICE List possible. But, if we could speed up this process, we could increase the rate in which we identify ICE thugs.
If people who witness or come across these incidents online share the details they already see, like the time, location, number of agents, vehicle plates, or even the type of uniforms, we can begin identifying those responsible almost immediately. Our new public reporting form at icelist.is/incident is there for those who are willing to taake a couple of extra minutes to help us on our project. It allows members of the community to report what they’ve seen, whether it’s a video on social media, an image, or something that happened outside their own home
The more complete a report is, the faster we can move. When a report includes location and timing, our volunteers can skip several layers of verification and assign internal sort codes right away, and get straight to work on identifying the kidnappers in the video that you see.
We’ve reached a point where transparency can’t rely solely on a small group of researchers. The ICE List was never meant to be a closed system, it’s a public-driven archive of state violence, built by and for the people. But to keep it growing, we need the public to meet us halfway.
Volunteers have spent hundreds of hours tracking down ICE thugs, and geolocating footage that could have been instantly logged if someone closer to the event had submitted it.
This is a fault of ours, as we should have encouraged this form of reporting from the start, but this is a growing project and we are learning as time goes on. The new method is about building a system where those who see something can do something tangible with that information.
We want to create patterns that reveal which field offices are most active, which regions see repeat operations, and which contractors or vehicles appear across multiple incidents. Those patterns are what drive future investigations, FOIA requests, and local warnings.
A side affect of this new reporting method will allow us to map ICE incidents, along with data shared with us by other groups, on a soon-to-come interactive map, where incidents will show the names of agents, locations, cars involved and more. We will ensure that incidents at the homes of victims will have approximated locations, like the closest town centre or near a local landmark. It is imperative that the victims are offered the anonymity that ICE demand for themselves.
This is the collective intelligence model we’ve always envisioned, a collaboration between our investigators and the communities ICE targets. You don’t have to know who the agents are or have proof of misconduct, you just need to give us what you saw. Once it’s in the system, we’ll take it from there.
If you can help spread the message, we’d deeply appreciate it. Encourage people in your networks, organizations, or communities to use icelist.is/incident whenever they come across potential ICE activity. Every report saves our volunteers time, strengthens our data, and gets us closer to identifying the agents behind these operations.
Together, we can build something powerful, a real-time map of ICE activity that exposes what’s happening and where, before it disappears from public view.
All relevent information will be passed on to state-level ICE reporting mechanisms, like those seen in New York and Chicago.
Report an incident now at icelist.is/incident
If you’re in a position to financially support our projects, we would be enourmously grateful for any donations that come our way. As we continue to come under attack, the methods to defend ourselves do not come cheap, and any help to ease that burdon would be incredible.
Thank you for all your support thus far.
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