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Inside the Federal Protective Service, Homeland Security’s Domestic Police Force [1]
['Spencer Reynolds']
Date: 2025-03
Targeting Americans’ Political Expression
Political targeting is a frequent problem at DHS. Congress has granted the department a broad mandate, enabling DHS officials to take an elastic view of what it means to promote homeland security and public safety. Its component agencies lack sufficient safeguards to protect against racial, ethnic, and political bias and are without guidance to promote rigorous investigative techniques.
Under these conditions, abusive practices are effectively inevitable. Across administrations, FPS has targeted Americans for their political speech and activities, even when unrelated to threats to federal infrastructure. Here are some examples:
Extremists Action Calendar: In 2006 FPS issued what it called a “civil activists and extremists action calendar,” listing advocacy groups and events. It named 75 protests, 60 of which had nothing to do with federal property.
A representative entry from the “extremists action calendar.” Source: Federal Protective Service, via Prison Legal News.
Occupy Wall Street: Internal FPS emails from 2011 reveal heavy monitoring of Occupy Wall Street protesters, even where they had nothing to do with federal facilities. The agency tracked protests — well beyond the rare instances that impacted federal property — throughout Colorado, Miami, New Jersey, and New York. An FPS regional director in the Northeast asked for updates about “what these groups are doing wherever they are in New England, not just at federal [buildings].” In Michigan, one inspector asked for intelligence specifically to justify “the need for an FPS presence at our facilities.” In Boston, FPS acknowledged no federal facilities were impacted but nevertheless disseminated intelligence bulletins because the Boston Police Department had said protesters blocked traffic and “taunted officers.” FPS similarly shared intelligence without a connection to federal property in Maine, Vermont, and elsewhere. DHS simultaneously messaged to the media and the public that its involvement was “rare” and limited to federal property.
FPS assessment of a monitored event. Source: Federal Protective Service, via Jason Leopold, emphasis added by the Brennan Center.
FPS media talking points about its limited jurisdiction. Source: Department of Homeland Security, via Jason Leopold, emphasis added by the Brennan Center.
Black Lives Matter: Amid DHS’s issuance of a swirl of intelligence based on “internet chatter” and concerns about an attack on a private energy provider, department intelligence and law enforcement officers descended on Baltimore during 2015 Black Lives Matter demonstrations. FPS alone sent 400 of its officers to monitor peaceful activities, on the theory that unrest might harm federal facilities. DHS separately sent, under FPS leadership, Border Patrol special forces — the same personnel who only a few years later would gain notoriety when they were deployed on the streets of Portland, Oregon.
2020 Racial Justice Demonstrations: In perhaps the most infamous incident involving FPS, the agency led a DHS campaign to crack down on racial justice demonstrators in Portland following the police murder of George Floyd. ICE and CBP personnel, including special forces usually tasked to the border, were cross-designated to FPS, which also received support from the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis. While some of the protests occurred near federal facilities in Portland, FPS operated throughout the city, and personnel under its control were widely criticized for whisking protesters into unmarked minivans.
Trucker Freedom Convoy: In 2022, truck drivers in Canada organized protests against a vaccine mandate for cross-border truckers. The convoy made headlines, especially as it proceeded into the United States with the intention of traversing the country in protest of public health laws. FPS issued regular intelligence reports while stating it did not know whether the caravan would enter Washington, DC, or impact federal facilities. In one instance, a senior FPS official appeared to justify the agency’s concern by pointing to potential traffic delays that could impact commuting federal workers — a matter of inconvenience unrelated to the safe operations of federal property.
Excerpt of email from a senior FPS official regarding traffic delays. Source: Federal Protective Service, via Jason Leopold, emphasis added by the Brennan Center.
Critics of Supreme Court’s Dobbs Decision: In 2022, FPS responded with a heavy hand to public outcry over a leaked Supreme Court draft opinion that would ultimately become the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. FPS officers in parked vehicles half a mile from a federal courthouse in Los Angeles claimed they were attacked by protesters, who in turn accused them of instigating the confrontation “by straying beyond the courthouse, driving into the crowd, and using aggressive crowd control measures.”
Later, an FPS agent joined Texas police at the house of a woman who had posted obscenity-laden comments about burning down “every” government building, a post that may have been incendiary but hardly constituted an actual threat. Indeed, it communicated a desire that would be impossible to fulfill, did not target particular facilities or people, and lacked specific details.
Yet the letter, reproduced below, from FPS to the social media poster made clear that the agency had monitored her commentary; it characterized her speech as “unwarranted and unwelcome” and threatened criminal charges if she did not stop. FPS’s letter read:
This letter is in reference to your recent post on Twitter. Specifically, on June 4, 2022, you became upset at the Roe Vs Wade [sic] decision and stated, “Burn every fucking government building down right the fuck now. Slaughter them all. Fuck you god damn pigs.” This letter is to advise you that any further communications containing any real or implied harassment/threats against the personal safety of agencies, employees or contractors towards government facilities [sic] are unwarranted and unwelcome. You are advised as of the date of this letter to cease and desist in any conduct deemed harassing/threatening in nature, when communicating to or about the federal government. Failure to comply with this request could result in the filing of criminal charges for violations of 18 United States Code Statue [sic] 115. In closing, please refrain from any harassing/threatening language when contacting any government agency.
FPS defended its reaction to a single hyperbolic blog post as part of its mandate to protect federal facilities, despite the vague connection. Social media is “irresistible” to law enforcement, even though it often leads to low-quality intelligence that congests and undermines information-sharing practices, as Brennan Center fellow and former FBI agent Mike German has explained.
Reliance on Private Companies for Surveillance
This social media monitoring at times relies on private intelligence contractors. For instance, in recent months, FPS has used Dataminr to track social media posts and protests related to the war in Gaza. Prior Brennan Center analysis has explained how the firm works: Dataminr “claims to detect real-time threats by sifting through unfiltered social media data, including the stream of internal data referred to as X’s ‘firehose.’ ” The company has been criticized for targeting Black Lives Matter protests. At its founding, Dataminr took investment from the social media company X (formerly Twitter) and the Central Intelligence Agency’s venture capital nonprofit, In-Q-Tel.
Social media monitoring raises a host of questions under the best of circumstances: Can officers accurately interpret the slang, in-jokes, and jargon used by anonymous users? How do officers avoid bias? What guardrails, if any, are in place to ensure that officers are not simply snooping on the basis of disfavored political views? Reliance on private firms makes the process even more obscure and its agents less accountable. Contractors are reticent to explain their methods even to government, let alone the public. In this way, they evade independent oversight.
The nature of FPS’s relationships with other intelligence firms is vague. FPS contractor Toffler Associates provides research to DHS to “identify potential threats and disruptions to domestic security.” RELX Group offers LexisNexis repositories that cobble together vast amounts of data about individuals from public and other records, such as those it obtains from local government agencies. Gonzales Consulting Services, a company that monitors alarm systems for FPS, states on its website that it facilitates access to law enforcement and intelligence data. Deficient contracting information makes it difficult to ascertain the exact nature of these services and how FPS uses them.
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[1] Url:
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/inside-federal-protective-service-homeland-securitys-domestic-police
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