Last week, social and news media was abuzz with allegations that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officers had access to a shadowy database full of information on protestors.
During a confrontation with ICE agents, two legal observers had their faces scanned by a federal officer to include in a vague database. “We have a nice little database, and now you’re considered domestic terrorists,” the ICE agent said at the time.
It wasn’t clear at the moment whether the agent was bluffing. But now, new details reported by CNN reveal that Alex Pretti, the ICU nurse murdered by ICE agents in Minneapolis was indeed closely tracked by a border agent system before his killing.
According to the publication’s source, ICE already had a treasure trove of personal details about Pretti before his death on Saturday. As the story goes, info on Pretti’s physical identification was collected following a run-in a week prior to his death, with another gaggle of ICE officers who broke one of his ribs during the encounter.
That’s not the only documentation of this shadowy data collection. A memo circulating around the same time advised agents to “capture all images, license plates, identifications, and general information on hotels, agitators, protestors, etc., so we can capture it all in one consolidated form.”
And earlier this month, border czar Tom Homan told Fox News that he was pushing to create a “database where those people that are arrested for interference, impeding and assault,” because, as he put it, “we’re going to make them famous.”
More on ICE: Activists Say Ring Cameras Are Being Used by ICE