An Irish man responsible for leaking the identities of thousands of US immigration enforcement officers has said he will continue his work until the Trump administration stops targeting immigrant communities.
Dominick Skinner is from Dublin but has lived in the Netherlands for over a decade. Last year, he started publishing the identities of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) officers, as well as Border Patrol agents, when US authorities dramatically ramped up arrests and deportations of immigrants.
Since then, his website Ice List has received millions of views, been targeted by hacking attacks and been dropped by internet service providers several times.
Last year, Skinner was criticised by US Republican senator Marsha Blackburn, who called him an “online foreign activist”. She brought forward legislation to criminalise the public identification of Ice agents.
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Despite this, Skinner said he has no plans to stop his work. “If they disband Ice, maybe I would stop collecting names, but I’d certainly pass on all the names to attorney generals or whoever might want them.”
He said he started the website after seeing a post on X last June from Kristi Noem, the US secretary for homeland security. In the post, she threatened to arrest any American who identifies an Ice agent online.
“So I just reshared that and said ‘that’s cool, I’m not in the US – so send them to me and I’ll do it’. And then that kind of went viral.
“By that night, we had private investigators messaging me. By the next week, we had a framework on how to work it.”
Skinner, who operates the website with a “core crew” of five people, receives information on the identity of agents from people across America.
He uses AI and other tools to verify the information before publishing it. In some cases, the profiles of Ice agents include their photographs, addresses and phone numbers.
Much of the data came from “two massive leaks” received after an Ice agent shot dead Renee Nicole Good in Minnesota on January 7th, an event which triggered nationwide protests. One of these leaks contained the details of 4,500 agents.
In recent days, the site has received around three million hits, Skinner said.
Other sources of information include hotel staff who send on guest lists of Ice personnel and bar workers who check the IDs of agents. Skinner says he is assisted by over 500 volunteers across America.
“This morning, I had someone who works at a Starbucks where Ice agents were getting coffee. They told me the names that were written on the cups.”
The 31-year-old said his goal is not to incite violence against agents but to hold Ice to account and facilitate a boycott of its personnel, who often wear masks while on duty.
He cites similar tactics used against landlords during the land wars in Ireland in the late 19th century – from which the word boycott derives – and against the Ku Klux Klan in Chicago a century ago. “That’s the kind of energy I want to push forward,” he said.
He rejects claims by Noem and her department that Ice agents are being attacked due to his actions. “Every time they say there’s an attack, it’s actually Ice attacking someone and DHS [US Department of Homeland Security] saying that they were being attacked.”
Skinner said the US is on a path towards fascism. “We never really expected to see an America like this. You probably never did and I certainly never did.
“Of all the countries to go this route, the most dangerous one is the USA because it’s so powerful.”
Ice List has recently been hit by cyberattacks, including one last week that originated in Russia.
Skinner said he is not worried about being personally targeted by US authorities. “I don’t really care, to be honest. They probably will at some point. I don’t give a s**t.”
It is illegal under US federal law to release personal details of Ice agents. Several people have been arrested to date.
