The activist who exposed US immigration agents

WashingtonBalaclavas, face shields, and sunglasses have become the new uniform for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. Often, this is the only way to recognize them during operations, as they usually do not carry any other form of identification or number. The protection offered by anonymity is almost total for the officers of this force, who are increasingly adopting more violent tactics and have become emissaries of the terror that Donald Trump wants to unleash against migrants. "These people need to understand that there will be responsibilities, that they will not go unpunished," defends Dominick Skinner, the Irish activist who has exposed a hundred agents with artificial intelligence, to the ARA.

Skinner lives on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, in the Netherlands, but his name has already been cited in the United States Congress, and the Department of Homeland Security issued a statement against the their website, ICE List. It's on this page that Skinner and two other activists identify immigration agents with the help of some 200 volunteers, as explained in a telephone conversation. Depending on the type of information they receive via the website, it's easier or more difficult to identify them. If a full-face photo isn't available, it's reconstructed using artificial intelligence, and then a data check is performed by reviewing, among other things, social media.

The list identifies not only the agents but also collaborators and senior officials. The website can be filtered by status, and some profiles, despite having names, don't have photographs. "These are cases where the images we obtained include third parties, and we didn't want to expose them," explains Skinner. Addresses are also not included.

"We used to do a lot of Freedom of Information Act transparency requests to get details about an arrest and possibly see who the arresting officer was. Now they don't share the names of ICE officers anymore, in part because they've seen what we do. Recently, the Trump administration has been pressuring tech companies to remove apps designed to alert people to the presence of ICE officers in order to avoid them.

Anti-Trump resistance campaigns

The project was born as one of the many resistance campaigns against the offensive of terror that Trump is deploying through immigration services. The feeling of insecurity has not only increased for undocumented people, but for anyone who is not white. A recent Supreme Court ruling authorizes agents to carry out arrests based on racial profiling and a recent ProPublica investigation shows how up to 170 US citizens have been detained and mistreated by ICE.

"What ICE does has nothing to do with migrants. It's about skin color. Migrants aren't the only ones who live in fear, but all those people who were simply born with a slightly darker skin tone than their neighbors," Skinner denounces. "This culture of fear is what Trump has established and it is his responsibility. And when his term ends, if any country wants to take the Trump administration to court, I will have more names to provide," explains the activist, who draws a parallel with the banal evil of Nazi officials who excused themselves with the "This time there are people pointing out who the Nazis are inside the US," he concludes.

Beyond being held accountable in the future, Skinner assures that the other objective is to make the agents comply. According to the activist, if they choose to go around with their faces covered, it's because they know deep down that what they're doing won't be well received by their neighbors. Skinner says that since he started the project, two agents have already contacted him saying they've quit. "In return, we remove them from the website," he says. The Department of Homeland Security has not confirmed these resignations.

Government Criticism

The Trump administration has called the project a public shaming campaign aimed at intimidation. Skinner defends himself by saying that the website does not publish addresses: "If someone wanted to attack an ICE agent, they wouldn't come to my website." He adds: "These people who are saying this are the same people who have openly said that ICE should have artificial intelligence to track and identify Americans. It's quite hypocritical to want any American to be identified except if they are an ICE agent."

In Congress, Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee introduced a bill this month to shut down Skinner's website. The lawmaker says she wants to keep the identity of ICE officers secret for security reasons, and therefore wants to make it illegal to publish the name of a federal agent with the intention of obstructing their operations. In the spring, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem threatened retaliation against any American who published the identity of an agent. Skinner says that's how he started the project: "I said online, 'Hey, Americans, I'm not in America, so send it to me and I'll make it public.'"

"I've been waiting for the possibility of legal retaliation against me, but I don't think it has happened yet because there's any legal avenue for that. We haven't broken any laws," says the activist. However, he believes this is the goal of the law being pushed by the Tennessee senator: "That's when I think they might move on to legal attacks."