Across New York and the rest of the country, ICE agents are staking out courthouses and arresting immigrants who show up as required. They are separating families — sometimes violently — while preventing immigrant New Yorkers from pursuing lawful immigration pathways, attacking journalists, and causing chaos in buildings meant to be places of justice.
Now it’s been revealed that President Trump’s FBI spied on a local volunteer court monitoring group whose members go to federal immigration court to hold ICE accountable, to document their abuses, and help immigrants know their rights. But the FBI wasn’t alone. The NYPD has admitted that the department is part of the FBI’s investigation, calling its involvement part of a “broader counterterrorism investigation” into “a range of possible criminal activities.”
FBI spying on New Yorkers for their constitutionally-protected activism and association harkens back to the lawless days of J. Edgar Hoover.
In the wake of these revelations, and as Trump weaponizes the federal government to target dissenters, the NYPD should offer greater transparency about its surveillance work and reject any effort by the Trump administration to spy on New Yorkers for engaging in activity protected by the First Amendment.
The current revelation stems from a “joint situational information report” from the FBI and the NYPD dated Aug. 28 that pulls quotes from a private chat among court monitors on Signal, an encrypted messaging app. The document refers to the participants, who have included Comptroller Brad Lander, as “anarchist violent extremist actors.”
The report brings back bad memories of the infamous Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO), created by Hoover in the 1950s. The Bureau kept the program under a veil of secrecy for years and Hoover used it to harass and spy on a vast number of peaceful social groups and civil rights leaders, including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Few members of any of the groups targeted by COINTELPRO were ever charged with a crime.
As for the NYPD, a decades-old agreement — the result of a landmark case brought by my organization, the New York Civil Liberties Union, and our partners — bars the NYPD from investigating political and religious activity unless there’s evidence of a crime. The lawsuit that led to the Handschu guidelines was filed because members of the NYPD’s “Red Squad” were disrupting the peaceful activities of civil rights and antiwar organizations. The NYPD spied on members of the Black Panther Party, The War Resisters League, the Gay Liberation Front, and many others.
In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, when anti-Muslim hysteria was particularly high, a judge weakened the Handschu guidelines after the NYPD claimed it needed more leeway to investigate terrorism cases.
Then in the fall of 2011, a group of journalists with the Associated Press broke a series of stories about widescale surveillance of Muslim communities in New York City by the NYPD. It was another reminder that we can’t trust the NYPD to police itself. After the AP’s revelations, the NYCLU and other legal partners sued, and a subsequent settlement strengthened the Handschu guidelines.
The NYPD has said its involvement in the current controversy followed the Handschu guidelines. But given its history, we can’t just take the NYPD’s word for it. The department needs to be transparent and earn New Yorkers’ trust.
When groups like the Black Panthers fought for racial justice, anti-war activists pushed for an end to the Vietnam War, and gay rights advocates demanded equality, reactionary forces in America could count on the NYPD to keep watch — secretly, invasively, and discriminatorily. Then in the wake of 9/11, the NYPD put entire Muslim communities under a secret microscope.
Now, as Trump vilifies and terrorizes immigrant New Yorkers, the FBI is spying on immigration court monitors, and the NYPD’s involvement risks both putting it on the wrong side of history and the law once again.
Immigration court watchers perform invaluable work. They bear witness and catalogue ICE’s cruelty. They provide support and reassurance to immigrant New Yorkers trying to build their lives and put down roots in our city.
The NYPD must not participate in any of Trump, FBI Director Kash Patel, or Attorney General Pam Bondi’s efforts to intimidate New Yorkers, criminalize dissent, or undermine our democracy.
Lieberman is the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.
