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Homeland Security Used Private Security Firm to Monitor Family Separation Protests: Report

The firm compiled a list of more than 600 protests nationwide.

The Department of Homeland Security used a private security firm to monitor more than 600 planned protests against the Trump administration’s family separation policy last summer, according to a Monday report from The Intercept. Documents shared with the outlet reportedly show that LookingGlass Cyber Solutions, a Virginia-based firm, compiled a list of the hundreds of protests and associated Facebook accounts, and shared that list with DHS and state-level law enforcement. DHS did not deny that the information was shared with the department, but called the data “unsolicited.” 

Immigration attorneys told The Intercept that they were furious that government resources were being used to keep tabs on activists. “The public rightly expressed outrage when they learned of the Trump administration’s shocking policy of ripping children away from their parents,” the deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project told The Intercept. “They’ll again be outraged to learn that, rather than focusing resources on reuniting these families, the administration was instead spying on them for expressing themselves.”

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