A federal agency is quietly building a database of Americans who filmed its officers.

"Capture all images, license plates, identifications, and general information on hotels, agitators, protestors, etc., so we can capture it all in one consolidated form."

— Internal DHS memo, as quoted in Electronic Privacy Information Center v. Mullin, filed July 24, 2026

Three people filed a federal lawsuit Friday accusing the Department of Homeland Security of running a covert surveillance program aimed at Americans who peacefully observed federal immigration agents. The suit, filed in the Southern District of California, names DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin and top officials at ICE and Customs and Border Protection. It alleges violations of the Privacy Act of 1974, the Administrative Procedure Act, and the First Amendment.

The plaintiffs are Nicole Cleland of Minnesota, Jacquelyn Ivey of South Carolina, and Anna Walker of California. All three had Global Entry or TSA PreCheck status. All three had that status revoked shortly after encounters with DHS agents during which they were recording or observing federal enforcement activity. The Electronic Privacy Information Center, a Washington-based privacy advocacy group, is also a plaintiff.

The complaint paints a systematic picture. DHS agents used facial recognition technology, license plate readers, drones, body cameras, and smartphone cameras to identify and track observers across multiple states. The information was funneled into the Automated Targeting System, an omnibus database that continuously monitors participants in DHS trusted traveler programs. Once an observer was flagged in that system, their travel benefits could be quietly stripped.

Translation: the government is turning its border security database into a rewards system for compliance and a punishment mechanism for dissent.

The details of the three plaintiffs' encounters illustrate the breadth of the alleged program.

Cleland was following a Border Patrol agent at a safe distance in a Minnesota residential street when the agent stopped his car, got out, and approached her. He told her he had "facial recognition" on and that his "body cam" was working. Three days later, her Global Entry status was revoked.

Ivey was recording federal agents in a parking lot in South Carolina when multiple agents surrounded her vehicle. They photographed her license plate, put a phone camera directly in her face, and demanded identification before allowing her to leave.

Walker was stopped by three agents in a Target parking lot in California while one pointed a phone camera at her face and another photographed her license plate.

The suit does not allege that any of the three plaintiffs committed a crime. It alleges that their only offense was exercising their First Amendment right to observe and record government officials in public spaces.

The complaint introduces a detail that should draw particular attention: DHS has quietly removed its own constraints on facial recognition use. In 2023, the department adopted a directive governing when and how its components could use facial recognition technology. During Trump's first month back in office, the suit says, DHS quietly removed that policy from its website. The department did not archive it. It did not replace it with a public alternative. The suit characterizes this as an illegal policy change made without notice-and-comment rulemaking required by the Administrative Procedure Act.

A separate policy at issue is a 2016 Mobile Application Privacy Policy that governed how DHS components could use smartphones for data collection. The complaint alleges this policy was also effectively rescinded.

The result is a legal vacuum. DHS agents are deploying surveillance technology that was previously constrained by internal policy, and those constraints now apparently exist only in archived web pages that even the department's own archive does not include.

The suit includes language that deserves to be repeated at full length. In Maine, DHS agents reportedly told multiple observers that they were being added to a database of "domestic terrorists." In Chicago, agents routinely used facial recognition scans on members of the public who had done nothing but stand on a sidewalk. In Minneapolis, legal observers following DHS agents in their cars would commonly be led by those agents back to their own home addresses, despite having never spoken to the agents. The complaint notes that this practice became so widespread that Minnesota residents coined a term for it: being "driven home by ICE."

For context, Minneapolis was the site of two deaths involving DHS agents in January of this year. Renee Good was fatally shot through her car window by an ICE officer. Seventeen days later, Alex Pretti, another observer documenting federal immigration enforcement, was also killed in an encounter with federal agents. The suit says the surveillance apparatus described here operated against a backdrop of lethal force.

The CBP spokesperson offered a standard deflection in response to questions about the lawsuit. "Global Entry or other CBP Trusted Traveler Program memberships are not revoked because someone exercises their First Amendment rights," the spokesperson wrote. "Membership may be denied or revoked for reasons such as criminal activity, violations of customs or immigration laws, or inability to demonstrate low-risk traveler status."

The problem for that explanation is that the three plaintiffs had no criminal charges, no customs violations, and according to their own filing, no reason other than their observation activity that would categorize them as high-risk. DHS did not respond to questions about its policies for recording or using facial recognition on observers.

The Privacy Act of 1974 was passed in the aftermath of Watergate and the revelation of COINTELPRO, the FBI's secret campaign to surveil and disrupt domestic political organizations. Congress concluded, explicitly and in the legislative record, that there must be limits on what the government can know about its citizens. The Act's primary sponsor wrote that the fundamental civil liberty at stake was designed "to assure that the minds and hearts of Americans remain free."

The Act flatly prohibits federal agencies from collecting records about how a person exercises their First Amendment rights. It also requires agencies to publish notice of any new systems of records they create, to justify why the records are necessary, and to give the public an opportunity to comment. By the government's own complaint, DHS did none of these things. It adopted what the plaintiffs call a "Protester Surveillance Policy," collected information on Americans exercising their constitutional rights, maintained that information in a federal database, and used it to revoke travel benefits, all without public notice or justification.

The suit asks the court to declare the policy illegal, vacate it, and enjoin DHS from continuing the practice. It also seeks relief for the individual plaintiffs whose trusted traveler status was revoked and who say they have experienced fear, anxiety, and emotional distress as a result. Cleland has stopped observing DHS operations entirely, according to the complaint.

The question is not whether the government can keep records on people who break the law. The question is why it is building a database of people who did nothing more than stand on public property with a camera, and punishing them for it.