WASHINGTON: A nonprofit news leak group said on Oct 28 it has published data on more than 41,000 employees of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), including those working on President Donald Trump's immigration enforcement efforts.
Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDOS) said it obtained the sensitive information from a "hacktivist group" known as the Department of Peace, which created a tool named Icepick that facilitates detailed searches of employee names, offices and assignments.
"This dataset is massive in terms of both size and impact," an associated activist, Maia Arson Crimew, said in a DDOS statement.
"It provides an unprecedented look into the Department of Homeland Security's organisational structure, highlighting which people do what work across multiple DHS agencies, including ICE," the activist said, referring to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
DHS and ICE have been at the centre of an immigration crackdown ordered by Trump at the start of his second term, in January 2025.
DDOS cofounder Emma Best called the leak "extraordinary."
The data "identifies the officials responsible for overseeing covert and undercover operations, the government's hunt for leakers...along with key personnel in DHS's ever-escalating rendition and deportation programs."
The crackdown has seen thousands of undocumented people detained and deported, while US citizens have also been caught up in the dragnet.
Last month DHS said it was initiating a "surge in sanctuary cities" – which are known to limit cooperation between local law enforcement and federal authorities – as the Trump administration ramped up its crackdown on immigration.
The non-partisan Migration Policy Institute said in a fact sheet that Trump's DHS has expanded its arrests and deportations over the last several months, outpacing the immigration enforcement efforts of his predecessor Joe Biden.
It said DHS, including ICE, "completed about 980,000 deportations" in the first 18 months of the second Trump presidential term. – AFP
