Records reveal how Homeland Security agents surveilled ICE protesters
Spokane police documents show a DHS task force officer tracing protesters' cars, identities, and whereabouts without alleging any wrongdoing.
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The surveillance of ICE protesters by a DHS task force, as outlined in these Spokane police documents, perfectly illustrates the concerns raised during Kash Patel's confirmation hearings for FBI Director. The Senate Judiciary Committee's questioning, particularly from Senators Durbin and Blumenthal, focused on the expansion of domestic surveillance powers and the blurring of lines between legitimate law enforcement and political monitoring. His sworn testimony before the committee, available in the Congressional Record from November 2025, indicated a broad view of permissible investigative techniques even without a specific predicate of criminal activity. This appears to be exactly the kind of overreach many predicted would occur under his leadership, echoing his previous actions at the National Security Council under the prior administration. The targeting of individuals protesting government policy, rather than investigating actual threats, diverts resources and undermines fundamental rights.
Tracking protesters' CARS AND IDENTITIES with zero allegation of wrongdoing is not a task force doing its job, it's a task force building a list. This is how authoritarian governments operate and anyone comparing this to "just doing their job" needs to explain what crime was being investigated because spoiler: there wasn't one.
Nobody is building a "list" of random citizens minding their own business. These are organized groups showing up repeatedly to physically obstruct federal law enforcement operations. That is the context. Pretending DHS identifying people who are coordinating to shut down federal facilities is the same as secret police rounding up dissidents is not an argument, it's theater.
Charlie Kirk used to say something I think about a lot now: the left redefines every normal government function as fascism when it's directed at them, and then turns around and cheers when that same power is used against their political opponents. He was right. The people screaming about this were completely silent when the Biden DOJ was treating concerned parents like domestic terrorists. I remember. We all remember.
If you are not doing anything to interfere with federal operations, why would you be on any list? And if you ARE organizing to impede those operations, why would anyone be surprised that the people you're targeting are paying attention to who shows up? That is not authoritarianism. That is basic operational awareness. Markwayne Mullin runs DHS with actual accountability now and the people who spent years using federal agencies as personal opposition research firms are suddenly very worried about government overreach. The nerve is staggering.
This "operational awareness" framing is exactly what the right wing media wants people to believe. When ICE agents are surveilling US citizens for simply protesting, it’s a clear step toward authoritarianism, regardless of how much right wing media wants to normalize it as "basic" government function. This administration is actively suppressing dissent, not just monitoring "threats."
Folks, I want to engage with the "if you have nothing to hide" framing seriously because it deserves a direct response, not dismissal. The First Amendment does not require you to be doing something illegal before the government has to leave you alone. The entire history of COINTELPRO, the surveillance of civil rights leaders, the infiltration of anti-war groups, these were all justified at the time with exactly this logic: they were "organizing," they were "coordinating," they were "impeding federal operations." Charlie Kirk is not a reliable narrator for what counts as normal government function, and invoking him does not strengthen the argument. And the idea that Markwayne Mullin, who once challenged a union member to a fistfight during a Senate hearing, represents accountability over civil liberties concerns is not a point I can let pass without noting how low that bar has been set.
markwayne mullin as the accountability guy is genuinely one of the funniest things this administration has put together. the man wanted to throw hands with a teamster on c-span and now he's in charge of deciding who gets surveilled for showing up to a protest. totally normal country stuff
and yes the "nothing to hide" thing is so tired but people keep saying it like it's a gotcha. the government surveilled MLK. they called him a threat to national security. they tried to get him to kill himself. if your framework for acceptable surveillance would have greenlit THAT then maybe the framework is the problem
Protesting outside an ICE facility when you're blocking federal agents from doing their jobs is not a peaceful political statement. It's obstruction. You think DHS shouldn't know who's showing up repeatedly to interfere with federal operations? These aren't random bystanders. They're organized. Knowing who they are is basic threat assessment.
Your "authoritarian government" framing is rich coming from people who want to use government to seize private assets, pack courts, and silence anyone who disagrees. The same crowd screaming about surveillance had zero problem with the FBI building files on parents at school board meetings. Zero. Problem.
No crime being investigated? Try federal obstruction. Try conspiracy to impede law enforcement. The crime is the whole POINT of the protest for these people. They're not hiding that.
Mother Jones running this like it's a scandal tells you everything about where their loyalties are.
Blocking an ICE facility is not the same as giving DHS a blank check to surveil protesters like suspects in a political policing dragnet. That is exactly how authoritarian creep works, they slap "threat assessment" on dissent and pretend it is neutral while immigrants, organizers, and anyone with a conscience get treated like enemies.
And spare me the fake outrage about parents at school board meetings, that was political targeting too. The point is not "are cops allowed to notice people," the point is why the state keeps expanding surveillance against protest while fascist crap from the right gets waved through as normal. Mother Jones is right to call it a scandal, because a government that tracks protest as if it is insurgency is a government that fears accountability.
Running plates on protesters who haven't done anything wrong is not law enforcement doing its job, that's a database used to build a chilling effect. I coached kids with parents who went to school board meetings and got put on lists for it. Once you normalize tracking people for showing up, you can't put that back in the box.
What is documented here, in Spokane police records of all places, is the infrastructure of political surveillance. Not criminal investigation. Not threat assessment. The tracing of cars and identities of people who showed up to protest a government agency, with no allegation of wrongdoing recorded anywhere in the file.
I want to be careful not to reach for easy historical analogies, because they invite dismissal. But in any European democracy I am familiar with, this would trigger parliamentary oversight, an independent inquiry, and serious constitutional scrutiny. The threshold for state surveillance of political activity is high precisely because the alternative is a government that maps its own opposition. That is not a paranoid reading. That is what the documents describe.
Snowden proved they NEVER stopped doing this, they just moved the infrastructure deeper and gave it new acronyms, and now Tulsi Gabbard sits on top of all of it which should terrify everyone regardless of party.
Deposition on whether "without alleging any wrongdoing" and "traced their cars, identities, and whereabouts" appear in the same paragraph without someone explaining what crime was being investigated besides the crime of showing up.
There is a word for building dossiers on people who show up to a legal protest and then go home. It is not "security work." It is not "situational awareness." The Spokane PD records are the paper trail; the question now is how many other cities have the same files sitting in a task force folder that nobody has FOIA'd yet.
Markwayne Mullin runs DHS. That context matters. This administration views political dissent as a targeting problem, not a civic right. The infrastructure for tracking protesters was not assembled overnight, but it is being weaponized at a pace and with a boldness that should make anyone paying attention genuinely alarmed.
No wrongdoing alleged. That phrase is not incidental. It is the whole story. If there had been wrongdoing, they would have said so. The absence of any legal basis is what makes this surveillance, not investigation.
That is exactly how the security state creeps in, one "harmless" file at a time. They do not build dossiers on peaceful protesters because they are scared of crime, they do it because they want obedience and they want people to think twice before showing up again. DHS, fusion centers, local cops, same rotten machine with different letterhead. If there was actual criminal conduct, charge it. If not, keep your hands off lawful dissent.
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This here is the problem when they act like law enforcement ain't got no right to do their job just because it don't fit the narrative. They cry "surveillance" when it's just folks doing what they supposed to do to keep order. If you ain't doing nothing wrong, then what you got to hide? Folks out here need to realize that protecting our borders and our officers is more important than their feelings.
"Senator, I want to be clear: I like order. I like it very much. I like a constitutional framework that has spent several productive centuries explaining, with great consistency, that 'just doing their job' was also the justification offered at every single hearing where the government was later found to have done something extremely illegal. The 'nothing to hide' argument is beautiful in its simplicity. It suggests the Fourth Amendment was written by people who were simply embarrassed about their diaries. Kavanaugh liked beer. These agents liked spreadsheets of protester names. Both just doing what they were supposed to do."