The Fake Free Speech President Has Unleashed ICE On Its Critics

from the what-free-speech? dept

It still amazes me that there are people out there who think that Donald Trump is a supporter of free speech. It has never been true. Anyone who looks will note that the Trump administration regularly engages in clearly unconstitutional attempts to suppress speech. But because he and his supporters like to claim he’s a free speech supporter, they believe it.

But here’s yet another story showing how that’s bullshit. The Wall Street Journal has a detailed report on how Trump’s personal secret police militia, ICE, is actively investigating, intimidating, and silencing people who criticize them online.

In recent months, ICE has deployed a round-the-clock digital dragnet to scour the public internet—from Facebook to Instagram to X—for speech that could endanger the agency’s mission. The government has paid millions to private contractors to surface everything from potential threats to agents to activities that could disrupt ICE’s operations, according to federal documents, contractors and former Homeland Security Investigations agents.

The program has ensnared U.S. citizens and activist groups that alert community members about ICE activity. Contractors prepare daily reports and dossiers on threat actors, identifying the poster’s name, location, date of birth, workplace, Social Security number, vehicle registration and criminal history when possible. 

To unmask anonymous online critics, DHS has sent hundreds of subpoenas to social-media companies, according to people familiar with the matter. Its agents have tracked down Americans at work and on the road, asking them to sign letters acknowledging their online speech about ICE “may” be a crime.

Criticizing ICE online is not a crime. It’s protected speech under the First Amendment. I’d point out that all of this clearly violates Trump’s early executive order on free speech, but did anyone ever take any of that seriously? It was always just red meat to throw out to his cultish base, rather than anything real.

Indeed, you can see that in the fact that the very same MAGA trolls who falsely insisted that the Biden admin was actively “censoring” people on social media will be quick to defend what ICE is doing here, even though it’s way more clearly an attack on the First Amendment rights of ICE’s critics.

DHS sent administrative subpoenas to Reddit for the information of 11 accounts that had posted “content critical of federal actions” between July and December of last year, the company’s most recent transparency reporting period, according to a person familiar with the matter.

While the article notes that Reddit (thankfully) pushed back on these requests, this is still quite different from the reports the Biden administration occasionally sent to social media companies, which tended to be much more “does this violate your rules?” not “reveal who these critics are.”

The article notes that these attacks on free speech appear to be ratcheting up as ICE and Trump grow more desperate to control the narrative around their secret police activities. That escalation now includes seeking grand jury subpoenas for critics’ information. And now that Trump gave ICE a lot more money, they’re investing millions in surveillance tech to track down online critics:

In the past year, OPR spearheaded an initiative to dramatically expand the agency’s ability to monitor online critics and potential threats, according to contractors, federal documents and former HSI agents.

Teams of contractors now scour the internet using sophisticated surveillance tools to find commentary that the agency regards as potentially dangerous.

ICE spending on surveillance technology and consultants has surged, reaching $258 million during Trump’s first full year back in the White House, a 57% increase from the same period a year prior, according to the Journal’s analysis.

ICE has inked at least six contracts that involve scanning public records for “threats,” paying out nearly $50 million since 2020. More than half those funds were obligated since last January, and another award potentially worth up to $50 million the agency continues to extend. The most recent awards call for contractors to help the agency geolocate individuals labeled as “extremists,” compile reports on individuals and cross-reference information with government databases, contracting documents show.

Of course, MAGA folks will claim they have to track down “threats,” but much of the content doesn’t sound threatening at all. For example:

… a New York poll worker named Paigelynne Gonyea received a voicemail from a man identifying himself as an agent with Homeland Security. 

“We were just calling you in reference to a post that we believe you made on Instagram where you doxxed an ICE agent back in January,” said the caller. 

Shortly after, two agents from ICE OPR arrived at the voting site where she was working. 

They held printed screenshots from her account, she said, including the post in question. The agents flipped by it quickly, she said, but she caught one thing: The post included a photo of Ross, the immigration officer who killed Good.

The file that agents were holding also contained Gonyea’s address, date of birth and what looked like a picture of her taken at airport security, she said. They told her to take down the post and asked her to sign a letter acknowledging she had been informed that she “may” have violated federal law with her social-media account.

Gonyea said she was only able to find one post that spoke about a specific ICE agent:  ”I think today is a great day for Jonathan Ross to be indicted!” the 40-year-old influencer and author had written in the post, referencing the Minnesota Star Tribune article that first named him. 

All of this is textbook behavior for thin-skinned authoritarians unwilling to tolerate even the mildest criticism. But in America, we’re supposed to have rights, including the right to free speech. But somehow all the people who claimed that Biden was suppressing speech have gone completely silent about stories like this one. Trump claiming to be the free speech president and claiming to outlaw anyone in the government from suppressing free speech means absolutely nothing as activities like the ones described here continue to happen daily.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, donald trump, free speech, ice, intimidation, paigelynne gonyea, surveillance