We Built a Public Record of ICE Because They Refuse to Keep One
Tracking Immigration Enforcement as It Accelerates Under Authoritarian Rule
At some point this year it became obvious that simply writing about immigration enforcement in the United States was no longer enough. Every time something happened, it happened in isolation. A raid on Canal Street, an abduction in Chicago, an ICE agent that made a single headline for his actions. But the reality of authoritarianism, is that it is an entire system, there are no isolated incidents, they are all connected.
There was nowhere to see these connections in their entirety, so we built a place for it to stay. And best of all, we’re doing so outside the USA, where Trump’s regime can’t get to us.
The ICE List Wiki is now public. It documents immigration enforcement activity across the United States, not just ICE, but Border Patrol, HSI, DHS more broadly, and the hundreds of local police departments operating under 287(g) agreements. Agent identities, incidents, raids, vehicles, supporting agencies, and companies propping up the regime, are recorded as the interconnected system that they are. Entries and linked to each other so that nothing exists on its own anymore. This is our Christmas gift to the USA: a record that refuses to forget.
The reason this became necessary has everything to do with the political moment we are in. Trump’s return to power has accelerated an enforcement machine that was already dangerous, but not yet authoritarian, but ripe to become so. What exists now is a system that moves quick, loud, and with very little interest in being legible to the public, avoiding accountability at every step.
Authoritarianism doesn’t usually arrive with a single dramatic act. It arrives through administration, repetition, and exhaustion. They break you down, and you forget how bad those initial steps were, because they had become normalised.
There is a huge misconception that this is just ICE, it’s not. ICE shows up, but so does CBP, HSI, DEA, FBI, local police, and even postmasters. 287(g) agreements turn police officers into extensions of Trump’s extremism while allowing everyone involved to hide behind the headlines about ICE, as if that is all that is going wrong in this moment. Together, these corrupted organisations are forming something much larger, much darker, and much more frightening than anything the USA has seen at home, but reminiscent of what the USA has seen in historical wars abroad.
We want to remove the misconception and track the whole thing. As much as we possibly can.
How does it work?
An incident gets its own page. That page links to the agents involved, the vehicles used, the facilities connected to it, the field office responsible, and the local departments that assisted. Each agent gets their own page, which will show the incidents they were involved in as our team completes our research and places them at scenes. A vehicle page shows where it has appeared before, and if we can, the agent(s) most associated with that vehicle. Everything starts with researching each incident, and if you have one to report to us, you can do so here.
This will not be a finished archive until it is no longer needed, and is still very much in the early stages, despite this, we have recorded hundreds of incidents that are under review, added over 1000 of both vehicles associated with the regime, and the agents connected to this mess.
The site will change daily. In the beginning, some agent profiles will be incomplete until our volunteers fill out information, some pages are detailed, others less so, over time, this will fill out to become the full record it has to be. That unevenness reflects reality. Immigration enforcement does not arrive as a clean dataset, but when we’re finished, we will deliver it as one.
This work expands with your help, you can report agents, incidents, and vehicles directly. Communities already know which cars show up again and again, they know which officers keep appearing, but they do not just appear in one community. Without the public helping us, we wouldn’t have been able to tell you that Brenden Cuni was present at raids in New York and Minnesota. With your help, we can track these thugs across the USA.
We are also tracking the companies that prop up Trump’s authoritarian regime, you can find this growing list of companies at our boycott list. Companies that you believe are absent can be submitted for inclusion in our boycott database, because enforcement doesn’t operate on badges alone, it also needs money.
If you want to come help us, we are actively inviting volunteers. This work spans every U.S. state, and it is impossible to document it properly without people on the ground helping to verify, connect, and expand what already exists. Anonymity matters, especially now, and the system has been built with that in mind. If you can help, there is work to be done, and we retain none of your information.
The data itself is meant to travel. Journalists, researchers, activist groups, and public bodies who want to integrate this information into their own tools, maps, or analysis can reach out for API access. A public record only matters if it can be reused and tested, not locked behind a single interface. With this public record, we will immediately look to first share data with anyone willing and able to bring accountability to the table, like the ICE dashboards in New York, Illinois, California, and that held by the House Oversight Committee, while ensuring a record is kept off shore, should dictatorship truly take over in the USA.
There are steps we are looking to take abroad also, where we will begin sharing agents identified in crimes against humanity for travel bans from countries worldwide, as these people are not just enemies of Americans, but enemies of all humans. Humanitarian law was designed to protect us humans, that is the root of our beliefs and the source of inspiration behind this project.
None of this exists without the people who have supported it so far. Sharing information, trusting us with it, volunteering time, backing the work financially, that’s what made this possible. We’re grateful for that support, and if you’re able to donate, it directly helps keep the infrastructure running and the work moving at the pace this moment demands.
The simple truth is that what’s happening in the United States right now is historically familiar, and increasingly unashamed of that fact. ICE is part of it, but it is not the whole of it, and we are here to get a grasp on the whole of it.
Authoritarians win when people give up, you have our word, we will never give up.
We’re aware that many out there may have data they want to contribute towards this project, or indeed, help expand it in some other capacity. Please email the project’s private proton mail icelistcd@pm.me if you wish to get in contact.
The wiki update is a monster project, and is taking quite a lot of time, and costing us a little bit of money. If you’re in a position to be able to make a donation to lighten the burden of that, we would be greatly appreciative. Thank you all for your continued help and support.
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