Judge’s Conclusions About Risks of Identification for ICE Officers

The record in this case shows that, with increased enforcement activity and the resistance thereto, there came to be “increasingly common threats of targeted harassment of and retaliation against federal immigration officers for simply doing their jobs.” In particular, it is shown by the affidavit of Eric S. Weiss, the Deputy Field Office Director for the United States Department of Homeland Security, United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Enforcement and Removal Operations (“ERO”) division, that:

Individuals, including immigration activists and other members of the public, routinely photograph, film, and publish online ICE ERO enforcement actions to include the personal identities of ICE officers and other federal task force personnel. The photographs and films are posted online for the sole purpose of intimidating and harassing government employees and are directly used by members of local organized crime and transnational criminal organizations in serious and potentially deadly ways.

That activity is commonly referred to as “doxxing.” According to Weiss, “ICE personnel regularly observe and overhear individuals shouting phrases such as ‘doxx these people,’ ‘find out who they are and where they live,’ and ‘we will find out who you are and who your family members are.'” Weiss also avers that there is credible intelligence showing that Mexican criminals coordinating with domestic extremist groups:

have placed targeted bounties for the murders of ICE and CBP personnel in a tiered bounty system. Cartels have disseminated a structed bounty program to incentivize violence against federal personnel, with payouts escalating based on rank and action taken.

The bounty system includes $2,000 “for gathering intelligence or doxxing ICE officers,” $5,000 to $10,000 “for kidnapping or non-lethal assaults on standard ICE/CBP” officers and agents, and up to $50,000 “for the assassination of high-ranking officials.”

According to the record, “[d]oxxing of ICE officers/agents has also been encouraged across the web.” For example, “ICESpy.org, ICEList.is, and ICEList.info” are sites that “perpetrat[e] the doxxing of ICE staff and contractors.”

Also, some who oppose the current modes of enforcing the immigration laws take pictures of ICE officers’ faces and run those pictures through facial recognition applications so that the pictures can be searched through social media. Experience has shown that, when an identification of the officer is thereby made, the search continues to identify the ICE officers’ family members and to locate the homes of the agents. Those findings are then posted on the anti-ICE websites which urge harassment of the ICE officers and interference with them in the conduct of their jobs in enforcing immigration laws.

These documented practices occur all over the country. And, the record shows that ICE officers in Richmond have noticed that individuals camp out in the parking lots of the field office location in Richmond to take pictures of the ICE personnel and their vehicles and license plates and following them when they leave the building. The pictures and information are then posted on social media websites such as X.

Those practices are not confined to ICE officers. The Declaration of Matthew W. Alien, the Chief of Operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration (“DEA”) tells that the DEA special agents who sometimes help enforce immigration laws, alongside ICE officers, have reported that members of the media and the public often take both still photos and videos of the agents which can be shown on media outlets or social media websites. Allen provides one example in which a DEA special agent image was posted on a social network [apparently BlueSky] with the caption “[t]rying to identify any of these FBI, Homeland Security, and ATF goons who invaded a Minneapolis community to kidnap and terrorize its members.”

According to the Declaration of Justin Hargis who is employed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”), a part of the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”), as the Executive Director for the Investigative Operations Directorate, who oversees approximately 500 criminal investigators charged with investigating, inter alia, threats to employees and doxxing involving DHS employees:

CBP, including OPR, has received a marked increase in reports of threats against law enforcement agents and officers and other CBP employees since January 2025 associated with increased operations and the public’s perception of CBP’s involvement in ongoing DHS enforcement initiatives.

Hargis also reports that along with the increased enforcement activity and the increased protests, there has been a significant increase in reported assaults on CBP officers and agents in fiscal year 2025 over those in fiscal year 2024 (457 to 856). Partway through fiscal year 2026, there have been 1,164 assaults of CBP officers and agents. Hargis reports that threats “increasingly take[ ] the form of posts and messages on social media, in group chats, and elsewhere that reveal personal identifiable information of CPB employees such as home address and personal phone numbers” (i.e. doxxing). “Modern technology and the current political environment have made it easier for bad actors to find and widely distribute personal information about [ICE] officers” and increasing efforts are made to intimidate the employees and to interfere with their ability to carry out their job responsibilities. Hargis gives many examples that illustrate that the doxxing, death threats, threats of kidnapping and assaults are very real in the lives of all ICE enforcement agents.

Like many law enforcement organizations, such as the DEA and the FBI, ICE officers often use surveillance techniques which will not work if the law enforcement officers visibly identify the organization(s) with which they are associated. Additionally, ICE officers, like agents in the DEA and the FBI, engage in undercover work where identification of their law enforcement affiliation would jeopardize both their mission and their safety.

Accordingly, “[w]earing facial coverings or otherwise protecting the personal identities of immigration officers can be essential to mitigating” the threats previously identified and to accomplishment of the law enforcement mission. The DEA also permits using facial masking and/or concealing the identity of its officers when conducting their operations.

As the Executive Director for the Investigative Operations Directorate at DHS explains, “the rise of doxxing, the advancement of facial recognition technologies, and the proliferation of bad actors on social media, has created an unprecedented operational risk for federal law enforcement officers.” Thus, “[p]ermitting officers and agents to cover their faces or remove visible identifying information from their uniforms helps to reduce the risk of doxxing by limiting the ability of facial recognition technology to identify the officer or agent and by reducing the likelihood that the officer or agent’s full name and other identifying information will be discovered by those seeking to dox CBP personnel.”

Of course, those who oppose the actions of Government in enforcing the immigration laws are free to protest against the laws and the way they are enforced. But, the law does not permit protesters, when doing so, to endanger the lives or safety of the law enforcement officers who are enforcing those laws. Nor may the protesters interfere with the enforcement of the law.

Those prohibitions notwithstanding, protesters, from time to time, violate those limits on the right to protest. And, in so doing, they sometimes violate the criminal law and are subject to prosecution. More importantly for today’s case, law enforcement agencies are permitted to take measures to protect the lives and safety of their officers and to eliminate or reduce the adverse effects on enforcement of the law that ensue endangerment to officers who are tasked with enforcing the law.

And, so it was that the practical realities of enforcing the immigration laws prompted federal authorities responsible for enforcing the nation’s immigration laws to authorize their officers to use masks to conceal the identity of the officers so that they can be protected in the performance of their jobs (and thereafter) and so that they can effectively and efficiently perform their jobs. In like fashion, removing organizational identification from their clothing further facilitates those objectives, protection and operational effectiveness.

Virginia attempts to meet the showing made in the declarations submitted by the United States by relying on the Declaration of Scott Schuchart, a consultant who asserts that he has general expertise in the field of immigration enforcement and law enforcement policy based on his work within the Department of Homeland Security and his practice of law in private practice after having left government service. Schuchart agrees that the routine use of identity-concealing masks and removal of visible individual identifiers during public-facing immigration enforcement was not standard ICE practice before 2025.

Shuchart does not refute the substance of the declarations offered by the United States that show increase in doxxing, threats, assaults, or the bounty system. Nor does he take issue with the adverse effects on enforcement of the law described in those declarations. Rather, he offers solutions other than those adopted by the federal immigration authorities. And in his view officer-safety concerns can be addressed through “written policies, supervisory risk assessments, officially issued equipment, and limited exceptions for undercover, surveillance, tactical, medical, and other sensitive circumstances, rather than ad hoc disguises left to officer discretion.”

To begin, that conclusion misstates the practices and policies of ICE. It is true that there is discretion not to use masks and not to remove identifiers in circumstances, depending on the situation to be confronted by ICE officers when enforcing the immigration laws. That discretion is not a basis to discount the need to wear masks or remove identifiers when the situation calls for it. And, in any event, the permitted discretion enables the federal officers to respond to real-time conditions, some necessitating identity concealment, some not. Moreover, Schuhart does not explain how written policies, supervisory risk assessments, and officially issued equipment would have any effect on reducing the risks and safety concerns that he acknowledges regularly attend the efforts of ICE officers in enforcing the immigration laws.

To the extent that Schuhart expresses the opinion that the declarations filed by the United States “do not show that routine masking or withholding of unique identifiers is necessary across ordinary public-facing enforcement operations,” that is a matter to be decided by the Court and Schuchart’s opinion is not helpful to the finder of the fact. To the extent that Schuhart’s opinion is that “ad hoc masking and lack of visible agency or individual identifiers can increase public-safety risks by creating confusion, increasing the risk of impersonation, impeding oversight, and escalating encounters,” that is a matter that falls within the discretion of the federal authorities charged with enforcing the law.

As a general proposition, the Court does not credit Schuchart’s testimony. Much of it is ipse dixit. In any event, the Court finds that Shuchart’s reasoning and conclusions are ill-thought out, presented in conclusory fashion, and are not really documented. They are not helpful to the fact finding task of the Court or to understanding any issue in the case.

His opinions on the quality of the evidence offered by the United States … are of no help to the finder of the fact because they are speculative and really are based on a lack of his admitted clear understanding of what is being discussed. Likewise, … Schuchart expresses the opinion that he is “unaware of any officer safety or privacy reason to fail to display a badge number or similar identifier, even in circumstances where an officer’s own name could present some risk of exposure.” The fact that he is unaware actually disqualifies him from expressing a credible opinion. Moreover, he generally ignores the evidence of doxxing and the effect thereof that is set forth in the affidavits submitted by the United States. To the extent that he opines that the wearing of masks enables imposters to act, his opinions reflect the weighing of factors pertinent to the policy decision to authorize the use of masks and identifying uniforms. Those decisions belong with the policymaker, here, the federal government….

Schuchart says that “it is hard to see how doxxing from publicly-available facial recognition software is different in kind from other evolving risks to officers and agents, which are dealt with through policy, application of risk-management standards by supervisors, issuance of appropriate body armor, and other ordinary law enforcement management tools.” That opinion is vague. It does not identify the other “evolving risks” and it utterly ignores how doxxing is unique in and of itself and how its risks are multiplied by the facts shown in the declarations submitted by the United States.

In sum, Schuchart does not help Virginia at all. The Court credits the testimony offered by Hargis and Weiss and the other submissions made by the United States and does not credit Schuchart.