Meta has begun blocking links to ICE List, a crowdsourced website that documents immigration enforcement activities and lists names of thousands of Department of Homeland Security employees. The move follows weeks of the site's links circulating on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Meta cites its privacy policy against sharing personally identifiable information as the reason.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, has started preventing users from sharing or accessing links to ICE List, a website aimed at documenting immigration-enforcement actions in the US. The site, described by its creators as "an independently maintained public documentation project focused on immigration-enforcement activity," seeks to "record, organize, and preserve verifiable information about enforcement actions, agents, facilities, vehicles, and related incidents that would otherwise remain fragmented, difficult to access, or undocumented."
ICE List compiles details on incidents involving Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol agents, including names of individuals from ICE, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and other DHS agencies. Much of this information originates from public sources like LinkedIn profiles, though the site claimed earlier this month to have uploaded a leaked list of 4,500 DHS employees. A WIRED analysis revealed that the list relied heavily on publicly shared details from employees' social media.
Links to the site had been spreading widely on Meta's platforms for several weeks, including on Threads. Now, attempts to click existing links or share new ones result in error messages, such as "Posts that look like spam according to our Community Guidelines are blocked on Facebook and can't be edited." A Meta spokesperson referred to the company's privacy policy, which bars the disclosure of personally identifiable information (PII), but did not explain the timing of the block or address whether public LinkedIn data constitutes doxxing.
This is not Meta's first intervention in content tracking ICE activities. The company previously removed a Facebook group that monitored ICE sightings in Chicago, following pressure from the Justice Department. The blocking of ICE List highlights ongoing tensions between online accountability efforts and platform policies on privacy.
