The FBI has reportedly warned U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and federal police to be careful when using online dating apps following the discovery of women’s profiles that were created to lure in and “dox” the identities of male federal immigration authorities.
The FBI’s Chicago office released an internal memo to federal law enforcement nationwide earlier this year that stated a group of women had set up fake online dating profiles that they believed would appeal to ICE officers, according to a copy of the memo obtained by government transparency nonprofit group, Property of the People Once, and shared with the Guardian.
“These profiles were incorporating imagery of a ‘traditional wife’ aesthetic and listing specific interests in an attempt to appeal to … individuals in law enforcement,” the FBI stated in the February memo, according to the report.
“The objective was to lure affiliated law enforcement personnel into an online or in-person interaction under the guise of a date, after which the individuals would be publicly exposed and doxed online,” the FBI memo reportedly continued. “The tactic is intended to generate public embarrassment and deter immigration enforcement activity.”
The FBI said a small group of women was believed to be behind the effort. The memo did not specify which dating platforms were being targeted or if federal police had been doxxed.
The internal government document reportedly added that the effort was uncovered in late January, days after the police-involved shootings of two activists in Minnesota during immigration enforcement operations.
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Around the same time, the New York Post published a report that some TikTok users were “orchestrating groups of women [to] chase d*** picks and selfies of ICE agents in a twisted scheme to dox them.”
The organization that obtained the FBI memo criticized the federal agency’s use of resources to issue a warning to federal law enforcement about this type of threat.
“It’s absurd the FBI issued a thinly-sourced security alert about ICE agents’ online dating troubles,” Property of the People executive director Ryan Shapiro said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “It’s equally ludicrous the FBI is spending taxpayer dollars to protect ICE agents from possible ‘embarrassment’ at the hands of a supposed ‘small group of women’ who might name and ridicule them online.”
The Department of Homeland Security stated in January that its ICE personnel had seen a 1,300% increase in assaults and 8,000% increase in death threats since President Donald Trump took office and ramped up immigration enforcement, though the department did not specify the time period that it was comparing numbers to.