Details of more than 41,000 personnel working for the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), including thousands involved in immigration enforcement, have been leaked to the public.
The leak includes names, work addresses and phone numbers of DHS staff, including agents working with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection, along with descriptions of the work they do for each agency.
Wednesday's leak marks the third time in recent weeks a government agency has been targeted by leaks or hacks.
A representative of the DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The seemingly unprecedented breach of employee information was put online on Wednesday by a group called the Department of Peace alongside cybersecurity researcher and hacker maia crimew.
The information was put in a database named Icepick and shared through a website hosted by Distributed Denial of Secrets.
Most of the agents included, more than 21,000 of them, work for CBP, according to the data. Nearly 6,600 work for ICE.
Other records show agents with Homeland Security Investigations, the Federal Protective Service and even people working for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
The leaked information also included dozens of previously unknown operation names, the agents that led and worked on those operations, and some of the technology they used in their work, including tech provided by Cellbrite and Palantir.
The groups wrote in an online statement that the the leak was not meant to be a directory of every DHS agent. Rather the aim was to replace "anonymity with accountability", according to Emma Best, a co founder of DDoSecrets.
"The leak is extraordinary but deceptive in it's simplicity as it identifies the officials responsible for overseeing covert and undercover operations, the government's hunt for leakers and the failed BlueLeaks investigation - along with key personnel in DHS's ever-escalating rendition and deportation programs," Best added.
BlueLeaks refers to a massive leak of US police data in 2020, data from which DDoSecrets also hosted.
A spokesperson for the Department of Peace pointed directly at actions by ICE agents for the groups work to hack DHS records.
"On July 17th, Markwayne Mullin said he was 'turning up the heat'. This is what happens to ICE when you do that," the spokesperson wrote on Wednesday.
Mullin in March became Secretary of Homeland Security.
The Department of Peace said it accessed the DHS agent profiles through a single sign-on service called Okta.
Okta is a popular online security tool that organisations use to ensure that only people with access to internal platforms are logging on to them.
A spokeswoman for Okta said the company is aware of the claims being made, but said: "Okta is secure, and we have no evidence our data or systems were compromised."
Last month, the FBI was hacked by a group called ShinyHunters, which took personal information about thousands of agents.
In recent days, the Federal Election Commission, which makes public political campaign donation data, was taken offline because of a suspected hacking attempt.
Public backlash to US immigration enforcement has been building as the Trump Administration has pushed a huge increase in arrests and deportations of people suspected of being in the country illegally.
Immigration operations this year have repeatedly turned violent, with ICE agents shooting at more than two dozen people and killing at least nine people.
Those killings include the high profile deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good, both of whom were shot and killed by ICE agents this year in Minnesota, despite not being the targets of arrests.
Often, ICE agents carry out enforcement actions while their faces are covered by masks and sunglasses. Immigration agents rarely identify themselves, despite being required by law to do so, and US politicians have publicly demanded DHS enforces the requirement.
Since President Donald Trump returned to office in 2025, the US has enacted nearly 1 million deportations, according to data from the Migration Policy Institute. More than 70% of the deportations have been of people with no criminal record.
Source: BBC
– Agencies
