A motion made public on October 2, 2026 in Hilton v. Noem, a federal lawsuit in Maine brought by people who observed and filmed immigration enforcement, says discovery shows a Homeland Security Investigations agent entered observers into ICE's Investigative Case Management (ICM) database. The suit, filed in February by Protect Democracy and two law firms, alleges federal agents retaliated against people lawfully observing and recording enforcement operations, NPR reported. In March the Justice Department told the court that “the officers involved in the encounters with Plaintiffs did not enter their information into a database or watchlist related to those encounters,” and called agents' warnings “empty threats,” Law&Crime reported.
According to the plaintiffs' motion, which relies on documents the government produced, the agent, identified as J.C., phoned plaintiff Williams to warn that she could be placed on a domestic terrorism watchlist and then created an ICM record on her. The motion says that record means she will be sent to secondary inspection when she travels internationally “through at least January 2027,” and that on March 16, 2026, returning from Quebec, Williams and her spouse, plaintiff Pantos, “were held for about an hour at the Jackman Border Crossing.” J.C. created ICM records for six observers in all, the motion says, and described two others and a vehicle as a “Threat to Law Enforcement, Professional Protestor”; a CBP officer ran a facial recognition search on photos of observers using the Mobile Query app. When a team reported it was taking observers somewhere, the operation's command center answered, “Take em home.”
Wired reported that the government puts the number of people at eight and that ICM was built by Palantir on its Gotham software. A DHS spokesperson called the case “meritless” and said “the underlying lawsuit is based on the lie that there is a database of 'domestic terrorists' run by DHS.” The motion's characterizations are the plaintiffs' account; the court has not ruled on it (see DHS Scanned the Faces of People Watching ICE, Then Revoked Their Global Entry, a Lawsuit Says and ICE Is Watching Its Online Critics Around the Clock and Subpoenaing Social Media Companies to Unmask Them).