E-Paper
Meta blocks links to ‘ICE List’ amid uproar over Alex Pretti's killing, what is it?
Meta has started blocking links to ICE List, which tracks incidents involving Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents.
Meta has commenced the blocking of links to ICE List, a site that aggregates information regarding incidents involving Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol agents, WIRED reported. The tech firm is also cataloging the names of thousands of federal agents.
Following an attempt to share ICE List content, an Instagram response stated on Tuesday that “We restrict certain activity to protect our community. Please inform us if you believe we have erred,” according to Deadline.
While Facebook showed similar results, any link or paste related to the ICE List vanished entirely on Threads, displaying a message that read, “Link Not Allowed.”
META censorship and killing of Alex Pretti
The evident censorship follows the killing of American citizen Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis. Pretti, a 37-year-old nurse working in the ICU, was trying to step in as masked federal agents attacked a woman who was watching them. The killing of Pretti on January 24 has emerged as a pivotal moment, even prompting some Republicans to oppose Trump’s aggressive tactics.
The restriction of access to the anti-ICE website on META coincides with the suppression of protests and criticisms directed at the ICE and its masked officers on the relatively new US version of TikTok, which is now partially owned by several Trump and MAGA supporters.
What is ICE List?
The ICE List is a collaboratively developed Wiki that characterizes itself as “an independently maintained public documentation project focused on immigration-enforcement activity” within the US. Its aim is to document, categorize, and safeguard verifiable information regarding enforcement actions, agents, facilities, vehicles, and related occurrences that would otherwise remain disjointed, challenging to access, or undocumented, states its website.
In addition to significant incidents, the website also provides the names of individual agents linked to ICE, CBP, and other DHS agencies. As reported by Wired, the creators of the website indicated that much of this information originated from a “leak,” although it seems to be primarily derived from publicly available LinkedIn profiles.
Earlier this month, the site gained widespread attention when it asserted that it had published a leaked list of 4,500 DHS employees on its platform, but a WIRED analysis revealed that the list was largely based on information that the employees had publicly disclosed about themselves on platforms like LinkedIn.
