The Silent Listing – How ICE Builds Secret Lists Targeting Protesters and Journalists

In this case, it does not begin with a law and not with a public decision, but with a sentence spoken on the street. A masked federal officer mocks a protester and tells him that he is now in a database and is considered a domestic terrorist. Officially, the Department of Homeland Security denies the existence of such lists. In practice, however, there exists a web of secret applications and databases used for exactly that purpose. According to statements from several high-ranking security officials, agencies such as ICE, Border Patrol, and the FBI work with a variety of internal watchlists that record protesters, their associates, and other individuals. These systems carry innocuous or martial code names such as Bluekey, Grapevine, Hummingbird, Reaper, Slipstream, or Sparta. They are not publicly documented, are barely controlled, and are known only to a few even within the agencies themselves. Their existence contradicts the ministry’s public portrayal that no such infrastructure exists.

Some of these tools were originally developed to vet migrants, for example Afghan protection seekers. Others serve the systematic analysis of social media, the linking of individuals through phone contacts, email addresses, or mere physical proximity. Friends and family members are thereby drawn into focus as well, without any connection to criminal activity. The data come from public tips, from photos and videos taken by operational units, or from material that protesters themselves post online. Officially, there are three major watchlists in the United States: an international terrorist list, a list of domestic extremists maintained by the FBI, and a list of transnational criminals. Alongside these, however, a parallel system of additional databases has developed over the years, operating largely in the shadows. It serves to sort and operationalize massive amounts of information, a task that even modern software reaches its limits with.

A lawyer within the homeland security apparatus describes this development as the result of constant overcollection. Out of fear of missing something, more and more is gathered and then pressed into new lists. In the end, a system emerges that no one fully oversees and that undermines fundamental civil liberties. The Constitution actually prohibits the collection of information about people who exercise their rights to free speech and assembly. Exceptions are possible, but must be clearly justified. That is precisely what has been lacking so far. Politically, this approach is accompanied by a new rhetoric. The administration’s border czar, Tom Homan, publicly announced plans to build a database of people who allegedly obstruct officers at protests. They want to make them known, he said. At the same time, the Department of Justice has begun introducing a new category: so-called aggressive protesters. This includes people who film, criticize, or approach officers without using violence.

The deadly encounters involving Renee Good and Alex Pretti show how far this classification can reach. Both were internally deemed aggressive, not because they were armed or violent, but because they filmed or addressed officers. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche acknowledged in an interview that Pretti had not been violent, yet insisted that his behavior had not been peaceful. This creates a third category between lawful protest and violence, whose legal basis remains unclear. Civil rights organizations have warned about exactly this development for years. As early as the Cold War era, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter criticized secret lists as incompatible with the principles of a constitutional state. Truth, he warned, does not arise in secrecy. Today, the system is no longer even unified, but fragmented, comparable to an insect’s eye composed of thousands of individual parts that nevertheless produce a single image.

This fragmentation is no accident. It complicates oversight, prevents transparency, and shifts responsibility. Many officers themselves do not know what happens to the data they enter. With software solutions from private providers such as Palantir, however, the consolidation of all this information is drawing closer. What has so far remained mosaic-like could soon grow into a complete profile. The consequences are foreseeable. Anyone once recorded is quickly considered a risk. Lists create their own reality, turning observation into suspicion and suspicion into guilt. Without public debate, without clear legal boundaries, and without effective oversight, a system emerges that no longer protects protest, but administers and punishes it. That is where the real danger lies.