A Texas Mom Created a Map of Companies That Are Profiting From ICE Activities. DHS Flagged It as a National Security Threat.

TL;DR: Laura Berlin built a tool showing which companies do business with ICE. Organizers used it to pressure contractors and banks. Then the database showed up in a federal intelligence bulletin.

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What’s Going On?

Texas mom Laura Berlin created Who Is Profiting from ICE?, an interactive database mapping companies, financial institutions, law-enforcement agencies and political actors connected to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Berlin built the project largely from government records, corporate filings and campaign-finance data. Organizers have since used it to coordinate hundreds of protests and campaigns targeting companies connected to ICE operations.

One campaign focused on Citizens Bank over its financing relationships with private detention companies GEO Group and CoreCivic. Jersey City announced plans to withdraw $265 million from the bank, while Montclair, New Jersey, voted to pull another $90 million. Citizens later said it would end its relationships with GEO and CoreCivic, citing “changed commercial circumstances.”

Berlin’s database also drew attention from the Department of Homeland Security. According to a secret February intelligence bulletin obtained by USA Today, DHS identified Berlin’s website while warning law-enforcement agencies that anti-ICE protests could escalate into vandalism or violence.

It’s Worth Asking

If these records are already public, what makes organizing them for public accountability suddenly dangerous? Is the concern really the information itself, or what becomes possible once ordinary people can see the relationships between government agencies, private contractors and financial institutions clearly enough to act on them?

The bulletin used a DHS information category associated with domestic-terrorism threats while also acknowledging that some of the activity it described was protected by the First Amendment.

Berlin says she plans to keep expanding the project. Her next focus is companies that provide data used to identify and locate immigrants.

What Can We Do?

Knowing which companies profit from ICE gives consumers another way to decide where their money goes. We have embedded Berlin’s Who Is Profiting from ICE? map below, where you can view the companies, financial institutions, law-enforcement agencies and other entities with documented ties to ICE using public records and corporate filings.

Start with your own city or state. Search the map for nearby entities connected to ICE, then consider whether you do business with them directly. That could mean where you bank, which companies you buy from, where you invest or which services you use. To see a full list of a company's ICE contracts, explore its profile on USAspending.gov.

If you decide to move your money elsewhere, tell the company why. Public complaints, cancellation notices, organized boycotts and coordinated calls for companies to end specific contracts can make the cost of those relationships more visible.

You can also look beyond your own spending. Cities, universities, pension funds, nonprofits and other institutions may hold accounts, contracts or investments with the same companies. Asking those institutions to review or end those relationships can turn individual choices into collective pressure.

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