CREW is suing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement for failing to produce records on an expedited basis in response to CREW’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking information about the Trump administration’s efforts to track and surveil protestors. 

Since President Trump began his second term, his administration has worked to ramp up deportation efforts while reducing oversight of DHS. Through the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” his administration secured a massive funding increase of $165 billion for DHS and its component agencies, allowing them to hire personnel, invest in new technologies and increase the scope and intensity of their enforcement activities across the country.

DHS’s recent operations and controversial methods—using unmarked vehicles, obscuring agents’ faces with masks, conducting warrantless arrests and engaging in racial profiling—have resulted in widespread criticism and condemnation. Tensions between the public and DHS escalated further after DHS agents shot and killed two American citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, during its operations in Minneapolis. 

In response to DHS’s actions, the American people have exercised their First Amendment rights by voicing their opposition, organizing countless protests across the country, and creating networks to monitor DHS’s activities, prompting DHS agents to turn up the dial on their harassment and intimidation of protestors.  

In January, reports began surfacing that DHS agents were using facial recognition software and other technology to collect information about protesters. During a Fox News interview, “border czar” Tom Homan said that he was pushing to create a “database” to make protesters “famous” in their neighborhoods, workplaces and schools. Many people have reported that DHS agents photographed their faces or license plates. Some have even said that DHS agents told them their information would be stored in a “database” in which they would be labeled “domestic terrorists.”

CREW’s FOIA request intends to shed light on DHS’s efforts to surveil and punish protesters and critics of the Trump administration. The court should order DHS and its component agencies to fully and expeditiously process CREW’s FOIA request so that the American people can have transparency into DHS’s unlawful targeting of constitutionally protected activities. 

Lawsuit documents

Read More in Lawsuits