Homeland security field agents are scouring the social media site Reddit, monitoring the communications of law-abiding Americans critical of the agency.
The spying is revealed in a January intelligence bulletin produced by the Border Patrol and leaked to me. The subject of the report is Reddit user “Budget-Chicken-2425,” who is not a narco-trafficker, gang member, or terrorist. Just someone concerned about federal overreach.
The report centers on Budget-Chicken’s call for a protest near a Border Patrol facility in Edinburg, Texas. Though the report acknowledges that anti-ICE protests throughout Texas have been “generally lawful” and that there’s no evidence of any threat posed by Budget-Chicken’s call, any protest whatsoever near the border patrol facility is said to “warrant continued monitoring.”
Screenshot of leaked Border Patrol intelligence bulletin
To quote directly from the intelligence bulletin:
“At this time, there is no specific reporting of planned violence targeting DHS personnel or facilities linked to this protest call; however, any demonstration in proximity to USBP [United States Border Patrol] RGV [Rio Grande Valley] facilities may present operational, safety, and reputational risks that warrant continued monitoring.”
Budget-Chicken’s offending Reddit post was on the r/RioGrandeValley channel. Titled “Join me in protest against ICE,” the post is just a few sentences long, calling on “neighbors, family and community” to “be witnesses and to spread awareness” by protesting a Border Patrol station.
Innocuous as this may seem, it is what the intelligence bulletin regards as a threat.
At one point the bulletin inadvertently reveals the “intelligence collection requirements” driving this surveillance—a window into how the federal government justifies this kind of social media snooping on Americans. According to these requirements, much of the work is sanctioned under so-called “Force Protection,” a military term for safeguarding troops from enemy attack. By repurposing this battlefield concept, homeland security is treating a Reddit thread like a hostile environment.
But the homeland security spies are interested in more than just Budget-Chicken. They are using Reddit to gauge the vibe of the country at large and what they think of immigration authorities like themselves. (They could simply consult public polling, which most recently suggests that almost two-thirds of Americans believe immigration enforcement has “gone too far.”)
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