Homeland Security keeping tabs on migrants’ text messages: Report

The Department of Homeland Security is monitoring the migrant caravan via text message apps and undercover informants, NBC News reported Tuesday.

DHS agents joined group chats WhatsApp, an encrypted messaging app, that immigrants in the caravan are using to gather intel on their numbers, movements and plans, two unnamed Homeland Security officials told NBC. Findings are then combined with agents working with the Mexican government.

Katie Waldman, a DHS spokeswoman, told NBC News it would be “malpractice” not to be informed about the migrant caravan, but she did not specify what methods the department is using to do so.

“We have an obligation to ensure we know who is crossing our borders to protect against threats to the Homeland, and any indication to the contrary is misinformed,” she told the news network.