The federal agents driving President Donald Trump's deportation crackdown just lost the cover of anonymity their bosses tried to keep in place.
A hacking group calling itself the Department of Peace broke into an internal Department of Homeland Security database and exposed the names, phone numbers, email addresses and job assignments of nearly 42,000 employees, Straight Arrow News reported Wednesday. That works out to about one in five people on the department's payroll, including officers with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
Straight Arrow said it got the data from Swiss hacker maia arson crimew and the nonprofit leak archive Distributed Denial of Secrets, known as DDoSecrets.
DHS has refused to name officers even after violent encounters, and agents routinely cover their faces during arrests. The workers exposed include agents tied to some of the most notorious incidents of Trump's second term, among them operations that killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis.
Using a search tool built by the hackers, Straight Arrow found entries for Jesus Ochoa and Raymundo Gutierrez, the two CBP agents who shot and killed protester Alex Pretti in January. A search for Jonathan Ross, the agent reported to have fatally shot protester Renee Good, came up empty.
The dataset also sorts employees into user groups with labels like Undercover Operations and Covert Operations, and it reaches well beyond immigration enforcement into Homeland Security Investigations, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
"This dataset is massive in terms of both size and impact," crimew said, adding that it is "a complete game changer for anyone investigating DHS, simplifying the identification of agents and their lines of command."
DDoSecrets co-founder Emma Best said the trove identifies "many of the architects and drivers of DHS policy," along with officials overseeing covert operations and the administration's "ever-escalating rendition and deportation programs."
It's unclear when the breach happened, but a spokesperson for the hackers pointed to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin's July 17 boast that he was "turning up the heat" following several controversial shootings. "This is what happens to ICE when you do that," the spokesperson said.
DHS, ICE and CBP did not immediately respond to Straight Arrow's request for comment. DHS officials have long justified hiding agents' identities by claiming threats against employees have soared since Trump returned to office.