WikiLeaks waded into the debate surrounding President Trump’s border policies Thursday by launching a searchable database containing information scraped from the LinkedIn profiles of thousands of people allegedly affiliated with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Dubbed “ICEPatrol,” the anti-secrecy website’s latest project contains publicly available employment data scraped from the LinkedIn profiles of over 9,000 account holders with apparent ties to the federal agency tasked with carrying out the Trump administration’s controversial “zero tolerance” policy against illegal immigration.
“This information is an important public resource for understanding ICE programs and increasing accountability, especially in light of the extreme actions taken by ICE lately, such as the separation of children and parents at the US border,” WikiLeaks said in a statement.
WikiLeaks did not return messages seeking further comment.
“People can disagree on policy, but it is unconscionable to target our employees and advocate violence against federal law enforcement officers, who put their lives on the line every day to keep our communities safe. This kind of rhetoric is reckless and irresponsible, and potentially puts at risk those who have taken an oath to uphold the law and protect public safety.” ICE spokesperson Liz Johnson told The Washington Times.
The WikiLeaks project uses LinkedIn data posted earlier this month by Sam Lavigne, a developer who wrote a program that scraped the job site for users that listed ICE as an employer.
“As ICE continues to ramp up its inhumane surveillance and detention efforts, I believe it’s important to document what’s happening, and by whom, in any way we can,” Mr. Lavigne explained in a recent blog post.
WikiLeaks subsequently mirrored Mr. Lavigne’s data and made the LinkedIn profiles searchable by company, location, industry, school attended and field of study.
“It is useful for journalists to develop sources inside ICE and to understand its structure,” WikiLeaks said through its Twitter account.
Mr. Trump’s border policies and ICE in particular have come under fire in recent weeks after immigration officials began separating parents and children caught attempting to enter the U.S. illegally. Mr. Trump signed an executive order earlier this week that ended the policy of separating families but left in place other components of his “zero tolerance” immigration policy.
WikiLeaks was founded in 2006 by Julian Assange, an Australian-born hacker-turned-transparency activist, and has previously published millions of documents ranging from hacked Democratic National Committee emails, to diplomatic and military materials taken from State and Defense Department computers.
WikiLeaks previously launched a similar project in 2015, ICWatch, containing a searchable database of over 100,000 LinkedIn profiles of individuals employed or associated with the intelligence and security sectors.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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