Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem set expectations high in July.
Well before her appearance at Portland’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility last week, she had promised swift legal action against “anarchists” and “Antifa-affiliated groups” who allegedly circulated the names, pictures and addresses of ICE officers in the city. Citing flyers of agents’ personal information and a photo of trash piled up on an officer’s lawn, she blamed unnamed politicians for “actively encouraging these attacks.”
“We will prosecute those who dox ICE agents to the fullest extent of the law,” Noem pledged in July. “These criminals are taking the side of vicious cartels and human traffickers.”
But three months later, it appears her agency has yet to follow through, even as federal prosecutors in a neighboring jurisdiction move faster to target doxing. A Tuesday press release from the homeland security department alleges that drug cartels have put bounties on ICE agents, repeating Noem’s claims that Portland Antifa groups have doxed agent’s identities without mentioning specific evidence.
In late September, meanwhile, a grand jury in the U.S. District Court of Central California indicted three activists who came to Los Angeles in August for a conspiracy to release the home address of an ICE officer. That prosecution stands on shaky legal ground, free speech experts say, setting up a potential test case for charges to come in Oregon.
“There’s some significant daylight between the administration’s rhetoric and the cases that they’re actually bringing,” said Aaron Terr, director of public advocacy for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. “It may be that they’re finding that when it comes down to actually successfully prosecuting these cases, they’re not going to have a strong case.”
An unnamed ICE spokesperson in an emailed statement referred questions about the charges to the U.S. Department of Justice and pointed to a press release from last week offering doxing examples, none of which occurred in Oregon. Natalie Baldassarre, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice, referred inquiries “back to ICE” and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Oregon, which declined to confirm or deny the existence of investigations.
‘They know where the target lives’
Since protest activity at the ICE facility peaked in June, federal prosecutors have repeatedly suggested in court filings that the personal information of agents is under threat. They have charged more than 30 people with crimes such as assaulting federal officers, damaging government property and failure to comply.
Court filings open with a common refrain alleging protesters have harassed ICE clients and employees, following them with cameras while saying “that they know where the target lives or that they will find the target of the harassment.”
Dominick Skinner, a Netherlands-based researcher and journalist, runs one of the groups Noem identified in July, The Crustian Daily, which vows to expose “state violence, corporate abuse, and the systems that protect them.”
He said his website doesn’t publish home addresses of ICE agents like Noem claimed in July, but his work uses artificial intelligence to analyze ICE arrest and raid videos alongside public records to identify agents by name. It’s similar to methods used by American law enforcement for facial surveillance.
Skinner suspects that more charges for doxing could be coming, pointing to the Tuesday DHS press release, which claims that Portland Antifa groups are shielding cartels from deportation. He said the current lack of doxing cases is yet another reminder of the legality of his team’s work.
“The reality is that the people fighting against ICE aren’t as violent as them,” he said. “They’re using intelligence. They’re not using physical assault or anything like this.”
The Trump administration’s claims around officer safety have also come under repeated scrutiny. Colorado Public Radio reported Oct. 2 that public data and court filings show a 25% recent increase in assaults against ICE officers, rather than the White House’s claim that there has been a “1000% increase in assaults.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom asserted last month that ICE would not provide data on officer assaults, accusing them of “misinformation and misdirection.” A June press release from DHS claiming it released data showing a 500% rise in assaults cites an article by the right-wing publication Breitbart with no additional links to agency datasets.
Republicans have also seized upon the doxing and assault claims to clamp down on publication of ICE agent information. U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican, introduced legislation in June, seeking a fine or up to five years for a felony charge for those who publicize officer names “with the intent to obstruct a criminal investigation or immigration enforcement operation.”
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi on Tuesday touted her agency’s successful demands for tech companies like Meta, which runs Facebook, to remove apps and groups that encourage users to log ICE officer activity. Apple acquiesced to similar demands earlier this month.
Oregon lawmakers took on doxing twice
Oregon has a unique relationship with doxing, a practice that gained notoriety after internet hackers and sleuths popularized the term in the 1990s. One year after the 2020 racial justice protests, state lawmakers passed civil penalties for what has now become one of the nation’s most narrow anti-doxing laws, specifically in light of First Amendment concerns.
Just this year, lawmakers refined their approach. Doxing became a misdemeanor under Senate Bill 1121, which made it a crime if the publication of personal information like a home address actually results in a crime like vandalism or assault. The law in both forms has been rarely used.
Sgt. Aaron Schmautz, executive director of the Portland-based Oregon Coalition of Police & Sheriffs, supported the legislation after he was doxed in 2010, with threats of sexual assault and murder made to his wife and daughter. He said Oregon’s measure came after concerns nationwide about particularly egregious behavior at officials’ homes.
“A person may wish to dox someone to chill their behavior, but then some other person has a different agenda and may show up and attempt to kill that person, or may otherwise have some concerns,” he told the Capital Chronicle. “This is all about how we expect people to behave in the public square.”
But squaring that concern with the First Amendment will prove tricky in ICE’s doxing cases, which deal with federal law, experts say. The novel California case relies upon a statute from the Court Security Improvement Act of 2007. The law seeks to protect the personal information of officials such as judges, prosecutors, witnesses and crime victims.
“The critical factor is intent,” wrote Ciaran McEvoy, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Central District of California, in a brief statement citing the law. “Even in a great country such as ours, free speech has limits.”
But the law outlaws the release of personal information like a home address “with the intent to threaten, intimidate or incite” a crime of violence. The California case’s indictment and complaint allege that the women wore masks and live-streamed the incident to their followers, driving behind an ICE agent on his way home and sharing his address. The documents allege they told listeners and bystanders “Come on down”, “La migra lives here” and “ICE lives on your street and you should know.”
McEvoy said prosecutors reserve the right to present screenshots as evidence. Two of the activists have pleaded not guilty so far, and another one has yet to enter a plea. But while three First Amendment experts acknowledged in conversations with the Capital Chronicle that forthcoming evidence could tilt the scales, they all expressed doubts about the case’s current viability.
“OK, they identified where the person lived. Did they encourage other people to vandalize the house, target the house, make harassing phone calls, you know, encourage people to engage in unlawful conduct?” said David Hudson, an associate professor of law at Belmont University. “That’s the part that I haven’t seen.”
On the other hand, federal prosecutors in Oregon could still bring a case forward that is even more elaborate than California’s current case, drawing upon tips made to ICE. At least one Rose City protester disagreed with the spread of a Washington-based ICE agent’s personal address and turned a flyer in, according to a photo published alongside Noem’s July statement.
“I don’t approve of anything Trump is doing in regard to immigration, but I don’t approve of this kind of thing,” reads a typed June 14 note, “and I felt it was the right thing to do to let you know.”
