How the US Department of Homeland Security Weaponizes the Word “Doxxing” to Shield Abusers
The DHS are choosing to use false claims, rather than pull back on their fascist tactics.
The Department of Homeland Security has spent the year devising a strategy that is as dishonest as it is effective: labelling any attempt to document abuse as "doxxing." With this single word, DHS and its agencies can discredit watchdogs, justify secrecy, and hide the identities of federal agents who carry out raids, detentions, deportations, and abuse.
When agents rip families apart at the border, DHS demands anonymity. When ICE forcibly detains people in night raids, it tells the public those agents must be protected. When private contractors profit from human suffering, DHS argues their privacy is paramount.
But the ICE List doesn't traffic in private data. It doesn’t publish home addresses, family members, or personal phone numbers, like the Department of Homeland Security has claimed, it publishes public information about public employees performing public duties. Court documents. News photography. Government records. LinkedIn profiles. These are not state secrets, they are pieces of a puzzle the government doesn’t want you to put together.
And when journalists or researchers do put it together? Suddenly, DHS cries foul. They call it dangerous, they call it doxxing, not because it actually is, but because the truth is more dangerous to them than any database could be.
This isn’t about safety. It’s about impunity. ICE and DHS agents operate in communities with near-total anonymity. They wear balaclavas. They drive unmarked vehicles. They deny names even when demanded by attorneys. And when a citizen documents that abuse, it is the whistleblower, not the abuser, who gets punished.
DHS has even used actual doxxing sites, like Canary Mission, to target student protesters for deportation. But when activists compile data from court records and news articles? That’s somehow unacceptable.
The word "doxxing" is being used as a smokescreen. A shield. A weapon. Not to protect safety, but to protect secrecy.
The ICE List fills the gap that DHS refuses to: it provides transparency, accountability, and documentation of state violence. If DHS wanted to stop abuse, it would investigate its agents. Instead, it investigates those who expose them.
The public deserves better. The truth deserves daylight. And no agent of the state deserves a mask when acting in the name of the people.
DHS is weaponizing the term ‘doxxing’ like MAGA and Trump successfully weaponized DEI, WOKE, affirmative action, more covertly ‘tribalism’ (even ppl on the left use this to diminish those who speak about an identity that has rightfully been under assault) and so many other words used for justice and progress. They recite & repeat until we don’t recognize the original meaning anymore. I truly wonder if there is a department dedicated to identifying language used in the spirit of progress, called “Weaponization of Language”.