ICE's Internal Watchdog Turns Its Sights on Online Critics
A poll worker confronted by agents at a Syracuse polling site is the latest sign that ICE’s internal watchdog — meant to police its own — has turned toward monitoring online critics, even as its oversight of detention facilities slips.
Paigelynn Gonyea, a poll worker in Syracuse, NY, was confronted by ICE agents at a polling site in June while voting was in progress. They cited a social media post they believed doxed an ICE agent — the agent involved in the fatal shooting of Renee Good during a Minneapolis operation. Gonyea says the post in question merely credited a news outlet’s reporting and called for the agent’s indictment. She refused to sign a warning notice admitting wrongdoing.
The notice came from ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) — a division meant to police internal misconduct, not the public. Court records show OPR investigated 131 cases of alleged “doxing and threats” against ICE staff between January 2025 and March 2026. Little is known about how many led to charges; reporting found only one related prosecution, and it predated the current administration.
OPR has also been linked to administrative subpoenas sent to tech companies seeking to unmask anonymous online critics — subpoenas the government withdrew rather than defend in court after free-speech challenges. Civil liberties attorneys note that criticizing government officials online, even anonymously, is constitutionally protected, and that ICE has been trying to stretch the definition of “doxing” to cover things like filming agents in public.
Meanwhile, OPR’s traditional oversight work appears to be slipping: detention facility inspection reports dropped from 192 in 2023 to 102 in 2025. ICE leadership hasn’t publicly acknowledged the online-monitoring effort in congressional testimony.
Anyone hoping to get a clearer picture through public records requests faces long odds. Federal FOIA data across all agencies tells the story:
- Requests fully granted: just 12 percent in FY2024 — an all-time low, down from 16 percent the year before and a high of 38 percent in 2010.
- Requester wait times: simple requests now average 44 days to close, up from 39.
- Who’s driving the load: DHS alone accounts for 61 percent of all federal FOIA requests.
ICE’s own FOIA office says it’s currently experiencing a high volume of requests. None of this data is OPR-specific — no public breakdown exists yet for how OPR’s case files fare under FOIA — but it sets the baseline anyone digging into this story would be working against.
Gonyea says she intends to challenge the incident in court. “I know that this issue is going to be bigger than me,” she says. “This is literally about protecting all Americans’ right to free speech.”