For years, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has used social media platforms like Instagram and X to publish photographs of people in immigration detention, frequently showing them being escorted onto deportation flights. In the first year of the current administration alone, at least 2,000 such images were posted on X, and more than 30,000 immigrants were named on a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) website.
Many of these posts list criminal convictions, some of which are inaccurate, and often appear long after the individual has served their sentence. In some cases, the captions go further, mocking detainees based on ethnicity or national origin. One notorious example: an image of a Sikh man posted just before the 9/11 anniversary was captioned, "Get off our roads, you don't know how to drive, Mr. Singh." Days later, a young white man stabbed a Sikh truck driver in Wyoming.
State and local officials have repeatedly complained about the practice. A Minnesota official said earlier this year that despite efforts to correct the record, DHS "continues to publicly repeat information that is inaccurate and misleading."
These posts are not law enforcement; they are shocking abuses of power. They endanger the individuals and institutions they vilify and misrepresent the real risks and benefits of migration. This directly contradicts the United States' obligations under the 1994 ratification of the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which cautions against portraying migrants as threats. The U.N. also urges governments not to amplify myths that equate migrants with disease, job theft, tax evasion, or crime, or that falsely suggest they rely disproportionately on public benefits.
The U.S. is an outlier in allowing its immigration enforcement agency to use social media in this way. One reason is the "government speech doctrine," under which the Supreme Court interprets the First Amendment to give the government broad latitude to engage in all kinds of expression, including xenophobic speech. But the fact that DHS can engage in such speech does not justify it. The key question for every government agency should be whether the law enforcement and public safety value gained from a communication outweighs the invasion of privacy and dignity it entails.
This balancing test is neither novel nor impractical. The U.S. Marshals Service has recognized this concern for over a decade. Its policy states: "Once a prisoner has been arrested, the general rule is that no release should be made, because release of photographs of that prisoner to the media or public would not serve law enforcement purposes." The same logic applies to ICE detainees: once a person is in custody, publicizing their image serves no apparent law enforcement purpose.
Because the U.S. lacks constitutional guardrails to control this pernicious form of government speech, Congress must step in and establish clear statutory limits on when and why DHS may publicly release images of people in immigration detention. In the meantime, given the ongoing invasions of privacy and dignity, DHS's social media accounts should be suspended until the agency demonstrates it can use social media responsibly.
This issue is part of a broader pattern of immigration enforcement under the current administration, which has also seen surges in ICE arrests and backlash from Hispanic voters. As lawmakers consider next steps, they should heed the call from legal experts like Beth Lyon, a clinical professor of law at Cornell University, who co-directs the Migration and Human Rights Program.
