'Incompetent': Agency slammed for shocking 'security failure' and 'significant data breach'

U.S. Customs & Immigration Enforcement (ICE) was launched 22 years ago under then-President George W. Bush, but the agency has never drawn more criticism than it is drawing during Donald Trump's second presidency — even on the right. MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough and Nicolle Wallace, attorney George Conway and ex-GOP strategist Tim Miller are among the Never Trump conservatives who are vehemently critical of ICE's 2025 tactics, which include wearing masks and snatching people off the streets who had no criminal record (including some naturalized U.S. citizens).

According to 404 Media's Joseph Cox, participants in an instant-messaging "law enforcement group chat" — including ICE and U.S. Marshals Service officers — "inadvertently added a random person" to a group called "Mass Text," and in doing so, they "exposed highly sensitive information about an active search for a convicted attempted murderer seemingly marked for deportation."

"The texts included an unredacted ICE 'Field Operations Worksheet' that includes detailed information about the target they were looking for, and the texts showed ICE pulling data from a DMV and license plate readers (LPRs), according to screenshots of the chat obtained and verified by 404 Media," Cox reports in an article published on August 15. "The person accidentally added to the group chat is not a law enforcement official or associated with the investigation in any way, and said they were added to it weeks ago and initially thought it was a series of spam messages."

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Cox adds, "The incident is a significant data breach and operational security failure for ICE, which has ramped up arrest efforts across the U.S. as part of the Trump Administration's mass deportation efforts."

The 404 Media reporter notes that this "breach" has "startling similarities to" Signalgate — a scandal in which members of the Trump Administration accidently added The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg to a group chat on the messaging app Signal and discussed highly sensitive military operations. The participants included Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard, and then-White House National Security Adviser Michael Waltz.

According to Cox, "the person accidentally added to the" August 2025 "group chat, which appears to contain six people, said they had no idea why they had received these messages, and shared screenshots of the chat with 404 Media."

Interviewed on conditioning of anonymity, the person told 404 Media, "At first, I thought it was just another series of spam messages like I get all the time from home improvement, car insurance, business loans, etc. Then, I saw the rap sheet and license plate numbers and was like WTAF."

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A U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official, who wasn't part of the group chat and spoke on condition of anonymity, considers this breach highly egregious.

The DHS official told 404 Media, "This breach strikes me as indicative of the current carelessness of officers. They're concerned about pumping up arrest numbers, not about operating with the level of care and rigor we should expect from law enforcement officials."

Author/podcast host Tara Dublin tweeted, "It's so weird how all of these Trump traitors are so completely incompetent #AbolishICE."

X user Karol Kotcheck commented, "No high school degree necessary! (Just get home in time for Mommy’s dinner before getting back to more violent, brain dead video games down there in the basement.)

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Read Joseph Cox's full 404 Media report at this link.