ICE Agents Authorized to Monitor Americans Using Fake Social Media Accounts

Immigration Authorities Granted Power to Create Fake Social Media Profiles for Surveillance

Internal documents from the Department of Homeland Security reveal that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers can now legally create fake social media profiles to monitor Americans online. The program, dubbed “masked engagement,” has quietly expanded the government’s surveillance capabilities, granting more than 6,500 federal agents and intelligence operatives permission to assume false identities on digital platforms.

Journalist Ken Klippenstein first reported on the policy shift after obtaining classified DHS documents. The new guidelines allow Homeland Security officers to send friend requests to social media users, join private groups, and access otherwise restricted posts, images, and friends lists without disclosing their government affiliations.

This marks a significant expansion from previous “masked monitoring” protocols, which limited agents to observing only publicly available social media content without direct user interaction.

According to the leaked documents, U.S. Border Patrol “may use identities or credentials that, for operational security purposes, do not identify a DHS/CBP affiliation, or otherwise conceal a government affiliation, to engage with other users on a limited basis.” This includes logging into platforms, joining groups, and “friending, liking, or following an individual in order to access information available to any other interested individual who opts to receive the information.”

The policy change comes amid an intensified focus on digital surveillance as part of immigration enforcement efforts. Border Patrol noted in the documents that social media platforms “require some level of engagement to gain initial access and maintain that access,” justifying the expanded authority.

Civil liberties experts have expressed serious concerns about the program’s implications. Rachel Levinson-Waldman, director of the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program, described the masked engagement capability as “cause for real concern,” noting that it’s being “shoehorned in one step below undercover engagement.” She argued that CBP appears to believe that friending someone or joining a group is somehow less invasive than directly engaging with individuals.

“This policy is insidious,” Levinson-Waldman warned. “DHS officers could use it to gather vast amounts of information about an individual’s social network. Doing so through an alias account—an account that doesn’t reveal the user’s CBP affiliation, and pretends to be someone else—will weaken trust in government and weaken the trust that is critical to building community both online and off.”

Political commentator Brian Krassenstein echoed these concerns, stating that the “new masked engagement goes beyond simple monitoring” as “agents can actually interact, infiltrate, and gather private info under fake identities.” He characterized it as “yet another example of ICE & DHS expanding authoritarian, domestic spying tactics.”

The masked engagement program represents just one element of a dramatically expanded surveillance apparatus within federal law enforcement. Over the past year, Homeland Security and other agencies have significantly increased their capabilities to collect, share, and analyze personal data, including immigration and travel records, facial images, and information from vehicle databases.

Federal authorities can now monitor American cities at an unprecedented scale. Agents can identify people on the street through facial recognition technology, track movements via license plate readers, and in some instances use commercially available phone-location data to reconstruct individuals’ daily routines.

Previously, DHS categorized its operational use of social media into five distinct levels, ranging from “overt engagement” using official agency credentials to “undercover engagement” using false identities. The new masked engagement policy effectively eliminates barriers to interaction, with the only stated restriction being that officers cannot exceed a vaguely defined threshold of “substantive engagement.”

While DHS defended the practice by noting it has “utilized its Congressionally directed undercover authorities to root out child molesters and predators for years,” critics argue the program lacks sufficient oversight and could potentially be applied far beyond legitimate law enforcement purposes.

The policy’s broad language and minimal restrictions raise the possibility that federal agents operating under false pretenses could monitor political activists, immigrant rights groups, or any communities organizing online. Unlike traditional undercover operations, which typically require specific justifications and approvals, the masked engagement program appears to grant blanket authorization to thousands of operatives.

This shift from targeted investigations to mass surveillance capabilities represents a significant departure from established civil liberties protections, potentially undermining constitutional safeguards against unreasonable searches and raising profound questions about privacy expectations in the digital age.