By Aaron Kesel
The international organization widely known for leaking government information and giving transparency to corruption and corrupt politicians has just created a searchable database of public information on ICE officials.
This comes amid a public outcry of ICE aiding in the imprisonment of children in what has been deemed U.S. President Donald Trump’s “child internment camps” causing a separation of kids from migrant families.
WikiLeaks released a new tool on its website named ICEPatrol, a searchable archive of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) positions voluntarily released to the public by each staff member. “It is useful for journalists to develop sources inside ICE and to understand its structure,” WikiLeaks tweeted.
RELEASE: ICEPatrol is a searchable archive of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) positions voluntarily released to the public by each staff member. It is useful for journalists to develop sources inside ICE and to understand its structure. https://t.co/rKUR8UVEE8 pic.twitter.com/6MoXeMdtRL
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) June 22, 2018
ICEPatrol is an important public resource for understanding ICE programs and increasing accountability, especially in light of the actions taken by ICE lately, such as the separation of children and parents at the U.S. border.
ICEPatrol is an important public resource for understanding ICE programs and increasing accountability, especially in light of the actions taken by ICE lately, such as the separation of children and parents at the US border.
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) June 22, 2018
This comes amid a leaked document obtained by Unicorn Riot which details “infiltration of organizations, and guidelines for breaking the law with protection from federal authorities,” Unicorn Riot writes.
The “Undercover Operations Handbook” obtained by Unicorn Riot is a 227-page handbook, which Unicorn Riot has broken into “14 chapters and 10 appendices, shines a light on the secret architecture of America’s informant management operations,” the website reads.
WikiLeaks comments that the 227-page document details instructions for agents to infiltrate by any means including marrying their targets as a “‘sensitive’ undercover technique.” It’s something that law enforcement agencies have been doing for years. In fact, in the UK right now there is a scandal where detective Jim Boyling (who posed as Jim Sutton protesting with the environmental activist campaign group Reclaim the Streets) is accused of having affairs with activists while undercover from 1995 to 2000. Boyling is facing calls for him to be prosecuted under laws used to jail a lesbian for tricking a woman into sex by posing as a man, The Independent reported.
Boyling had two children with one woman who he married and later divorced, according to an earlier report by the Dailymail in 2014.
Of particular interest, this type of human rights abuse was only made “legal” in 2012 by then sitting Home Office Minister Nick Herbert who ruled that, “Undercover police officers can start sexual relationships with suspected criminals if it means they are more plausible.”
WikiLeaks further states that the “ICE operations manual envisages ICE (& DHS) agents duplicitously marrying their targets raising the possibility of a US #SpyCops scandal where UK undercover police lived with and impregnated political dissidents.”
ICE Undercover Operations manual envisages ICE (& DHS) agents duplicitously marrying their targets raising the possibility of a US #SpyCops scandal where UK undercover police lived with and impregnated political dissidents..https://t.co/qK3XqStEtZ pic.twitter.com/RDbABdggOI
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) June 22, 2018
Boyling wasn’t the only officer who was involved in this scandal, but is only one of several officers who infiltrated campaign groups deemed radical by Scotland Yard in the 1980s and 1990s.
Jon Murphy, the chief constable of Merseyside, told The Guardian it was “never acceptable” for undercover officers to sleep with people they were targeting.
“Something has gone badly wrong here. We would not be where we are if it had not,” he said, referring to three inquiries into undercover policing that have been launched in response to the Guardian‘s investigation into the first spy, Mark Kennedy, an undercover officer who had several sexual relationships during his seven-year deployment.
Other officers accused of sleeping with activists in the almost decade-long scandal include Lynn Watson and Mark Jacobs … and there may be many more, The Guardian reported in 2011.
Another report in New Zealand highlights an officer, Rob Gilchrist, spying on an activist named Rochelle Rees and establishing a relationship with her. Rees writes:
I work as a computer programmer, and in late 2008 Rob asked me to fix his computer as it was running slow.
It was then that I first saw Rob was forwarding internal group emails from climate change, animal rights and peace groups to a strange email address.
Rees further expressed that she was worried how widespread this type of infiltration was in activist groups worldwide.
I fear that, like in the UK, my situation may not be a one-off. It is clear that the intention of the police was not to gather evidence to prosecute crimes. Rather, this was a long-term intelligence gathering operation targeting legally protected democratic activities. Rob’s handlers were attached to the Special Investigations Group who have at least 30 full-time police officers working on the surveillance of activists.
There are also the cases of John Dines and Helen Steel and Robert Lambert and Karen; these are probably far from the only cases of police faking love and toying with the emotions of their targets and is likely a widespread issue that some may argue violates human rights.
It is entirely plausible that after the leak by Unicorn Riot that ICE was involved in the same behavior as UK police infiltration groups with sex. WikiLeaks decided to compile a public documentation of officials using their own publicly available information.
Indeed with the publishing of the ICE manual, and the UK scandal, one has to wonder if this type of behavior is permitted in other agencies for undercover operations like the CIA, FBI, and the rest of the alphabet soup not only dating “targets” to spy on them but marrying them and having children with them? ¡Ay, caramba!
Aaron Kesel writes for Activist Post. Support us at Patreon. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Steemit, and BitChute. Ready for solutions? Subscribe to our premium newsletter Counter Markets.
Image credit: RT
The information in this article absolutely enrages me. Western governments have become more and more unethical and immoral and luxuriate in it. No matter where you are (New Zealand, of all places) you can no longer trust your government or any of its agencies! What a disgusting and dysfunctional turn of events!