Unrest Inside: HSI Agents Vent About Mass Deportation, Mismanagement, and Fatal Shootings in Private Forum
Each day, current and former Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) officers log into a private online forum to unpack daily news, share unfiltered perspectives, and vent about their colleagues at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
“ERO is too busy playing dress-up as Black Ops commandos — decked out in tactical body armor, drop-down thigh rigs, balaclavas, extra M4 magazines, and Punisher patches — to carry out a routine administrative arrest of a 90-pound, 5-foot-2 non-criminal, non-violent EWI, inside a secured federal building where every person has already been screened for weapons,” one user posted in July 2025. (For context, ERO stands for Enforcement and Removal Operations; alongside HSI, it is one of ICE’s two core divisions, tasked with detaining and deporting immigrants.)
The forum bills itself as a community for current and aspiring HSI agents, “built for the seasoned HSI Special Agent as well as applicants for entry-level Special Agent positions.” As an ICE branch, HSI agents typically lead investigations into serious transnational crimes including drug smuggling, terrorism, and human trafficking.
Inside the forum, members open up about their unease with U.S. mass deportation efforts, debate how federal agents engage with protesters and the general public, and complain about poor working conditions. Members have also held fierce, divided debates over the fatal shootings of two protesters, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, in Minneapolis, and the state of immigration enforcement across the country.
This HSI community is one of several connected private forums where Department of Homeland Security (DHS) employees across different branches share on-the-job experiences and discuss granular, internal details of their work. WIRED previously reported on a separate forum where current and former deportation officers from ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) similarly vented about working conditions and criticized the agency’s approach to immigration raids. The HSI forum appears to be directly connected to that space, with overlapping membership.
Users do not need to verify their DHS employment to join these forums, and the platforms are not heavily moderated. While WIRED has not confirmed the individual identities of the posters, commenters regularly share specific details that would only be known to people with intimate knowledge of HSI operations. The HSI forum has more than 2,000 members, with posts dating back to at least 2004.
DHS and ICE did not respond to WIRED’s requests for comment on this story.
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Following the killings of Good and Pretti, forum members were deeply divided in their reactions. In a thread posted January 12, five days after Good was fatally shot by ICE agent Jonathan Ross, a member who joined the forum in 2016 wrote:
“IMHO, the situation with ICE Operations have gotten to an unprecedented level of violence from both the Suspects and the General Public. I hope the AG is looking at the temporary suspension of Civil Liberties, (during and in the geographic locales where ICE Operations are being conducted).”
A user who joined in 2018 and identified as a recently retired agent responded: “This is an excellent idea and well warranted. These are organized, well financed civil disturbances, dare I say an INSURRECTION?!?”
In a January 16 post titled “The Shooting,” some commenters offered a more nuanced perspective. “I get that it is a good shoot legally and all that, but all he had to do was step aside, he nearly shot one of his partners for Gods sake!” wrote a poster who first joined the forum in March 2022. “A USC woman non-crim shot in the head on TV for what? Just doesn't sit well with me… A seasoned SRT guy who was able to execute someone while holding a phone seems to me he could have simply got out of the way.” SRT refers to ICE’s elite Special Response Team, a unit that receives specialized training for high-risk operations, while USC is agency shorthand for U.S. citizens.
“You clearly haven’t been TDY anywhere. Yes, they were going to arrest her for 111,” responded another poster who joined in June 2018. “Tons of USCs are being arrested for it daily.” 111 refers to the section of U.S. criminal code covering assaulting, resisting, or impeding federal officers, while TDY stands for “temporary duty,” when officers are reassigned to other locations for a limited period.
“Can't believe we have ‘supposed agents’ here questioning the shooting of a domestic terrorist,” wrote a third user who joined the forum in December 2025. (Following the shooting, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem publicly labeled Good a “domestic terrorist.”)
The original poster fired back: “If you think a fat unarmed lesbian in a Honda is a ‘Terrorist’ then you are a fake ass cop! I have worked real Terrorism cases, and I am not saying it was a bad shoot and not defending her. I am just saying it did not have to happen.”
Later in the thread, a member who joined in July 2023 added: “Remember, these are the same agents who think J6’ers were just misunderstood rowdy tourists, and that Ashley Babbitt is a national hero…and if you dare say something negative about Trump, or try to hold him accountable, you're suddenly a leftie, communist, lunatic (even though I’m a Republican).”
In a separate thread after Pretti was killed by a CBP agent on January 24, a retired agent who joined the forum in 2023 wrote: “Yet another ‘justified’ fatal shooting…They all carry gun belts and vest with 9,000 pieces of equipment on them and then best they can do is shoot a guy in the back.”
The thread quickly devolved into a fight over whether January 6 insurrectionists qualify as domestic terrorists, and why Kyle Rittenhouse — who killed two people at a 2020 Black Lives Matter protest — was taken into custody alive.
“I just want to mention, we all get emotions are heightened right now. But I highly doubt being a legacy customs guy you ever did anything where the risk was beyond the potential for paper cuts,” wrote a user who first joined in June 2025. “It’s a new day with new threats in an environment you never fathomed in your career.”
Even before the Good and Pretti shootings, forum members already questioned the wisdom of deploying HSI agents to the Trump administration’s mass immigration enforcement mobilization. HSI’s core mandate is criminal investigations, but undocumented residence in the U.S. is a civil offense, and the majority of immigrants detained or deported in 2025 had no criminal convictions on their records.
One poster argued that diverting HSI agents pulled critical resources away from more urgent, high-stakes investigations.
“The use of 1811s — HSI or otherwise — for administrative immigration enforcement is a complete misuse of resources,” wrote a member who joined in October 2022 in a January 7 post. 1811 is the federal job classification for special agents who conduct criminal investigations. “They could be doing these crime surges for literally any type of federal criminal investigations (drugs, child exploitation, gangs, etc.), and it would be a much better use of resources. Not only that, our reputations would still be intact.”
Other members vented about the dysfunctional working dynamic between HSI and ERO teams. “It's pretty bad when ERO at a large metropolitan city get's backed up with 30 bodies and they call the SA's in to process,” wrote a 2010 member in a July 7, 2025 post (SA is shorthand for special agents). “I guess that is what happens when they have not done any immigration work in decades.”
“Complete opposite in our [area of responsibility],” replied a member who first joined in 2012. “No one has a clue what most of ero is doing and are asking us to be included on anything immigration we're doing and introduce them to DEA contacts working investigations involving illegals.”
A third member, who joined the forum in 2024, added: “ERO does essentially nothing. I walked in the office the other day and the HSI SAs were doing jail pickups and processing. The ERO folks were gathered around a desk drinking coffee and joking around.” This dynamic plays out around immigration detainers, requests where ICE asks jails to hold people the agency is pursuing for up to 48 hours beyond their scheduled release to allow ICE agents to pick them up.
In the lead-up to large-scale federal immigration operations in Minneapolis, members repeatedly complained about grueling, uncompensated long hours. “How are RHAs expected to go on TDYs with NO days off and lots of [overtime] when they are all capped out (biweekly and yearly [sic]),” complained a user who first joined the forum in December 2004 in a December 7, 2025 post. “ERO has NO caps.” RHAs refers to rehired annuitants, retired federal agents who return to work while still collecting their federal retirement benefits.
“I’m capped out so only getting paid for 5 days at 10 hours a day,” wrote the 2010 member in a separate thread (overtime pay rules vary across different agency roles). ”Anything over 50 hours a week and I'm working for free.”
Other members said they were still waiting for promised signing bonuses, and expressed frustration with unexpected discrepancies in their paychecks. For rehired annuitants, ICE offered a signing bonus of up to $50,000. “Not sure how they calculated the current pay from the super check received today, but mine can’t be right,” a 2021 member wrote in an October post. “My super check netted me a grand total of $600 more.”
In another thread about bonus payouts, a member who joined in 2005 responded: “I got a deposit last night or early this morning. It looks like 10k after taxes plus my regular pay check. Not sure yet. However the deal was 20K. WTF?!”
In a December thread, members discussed the increasingly aggressive interactions agents have had with immigration protesters. One retired agent wrote: “I’ve seen a lot of videos lately of HSI or ERO agents getting triggered by civilians taking photos or videos of them or their vehicles. In several of the videos the agents are seen jumping out of their GOVs, manhandling the civilian, and smashing or confiscating their phones. I would have been fired and/or prosecuted for something like this. I believe everyone knows at this point that taking photos/videos is a protected act unless someone is clearly impeding or obstructing (which doesn’t always appear to be the case).”
“Ah...Cell phone video. You can make them tell what ever story you want with creative editing,” replied a poster who joined in September 2025.
This friction comes as civilian groups have organized to monitor federal immigration operations, particularly in Minnesota, coordinating to witness and record agent activity, and sometimes tailing suspected ICE vehicles and cross-checking license plates in private Signal groups. In turn, federal agents have been documented taking photos and videos of protesters, with one legal observer in Maine claiming an agent told her she would be added to a terror watchlist. In congressional testimony this week, acting ICE director Todd Lyons told lawmakers that ICE is not maintaining such a list of U.S. citizens.
Across the forum, members also complain about shortages of essential protective gear and outdated, poorly designed agency technology. “Apparently there is enough money to buy a bunch of ICE marked cars but not get us some basic protective gear…” wrote one user in a January 27 post. In a follow-up, they added: “I also have a suspicion that HQ or the [Executive Associate Director] have not advocated to get us gear to handle all the nut job protesters.”
In a July 2025 thread titled “Alien Processing,” one poster railed: “How is it that with all the technology we have and an entire fkn building full of computer geeks this fkn agency cannot make a fkn system that works properly and effectively in a simple user friendly fashion? This Eagle crap is a total mess!” EAGLE refers to the Enforcement Integrated Database (EID) Arrest Guide for Law Enforcement, ICE’s system for processing the biometric and personal information of people arrested by the agency. “It takes longer to process a fkn alien than it does to actually catch them. We dont need 10,000 new ICE Officers/Agents, just hire fkn people to process them so we can do our jobs of catching them.”
Members did name one popular piece of new ICE technology: responding to the “Alien Processing” thread, a member who joined in March 2025 wrote “Mobile Fortify is the best thing that has come out in a long time,” referring to the mobile facial recognition app federal agents use to identify people in the field.
According to DHS’s 2025 AI Use Case Inventory, agents have had access to Mobile Fortify since May 2025. The app uses artificial intelligence trained on CBP’s “Vetting/Border Crossing Information/ Trusted Traveler Information” to match photos taken by agents and contactless fingerprints against existing government records. 404 Media has reported that the app has misidentified at least one person, likely because, as WIRED has previously documented, it was not originally designed for the broad use case ICE is now applying it to.
While ICE’s large enforcement surge in Minnesota appears to be winding down, the agency continues to expand its footprint across the U.S., investing in a network of new detention centers and large warehouses to hold immigrants, signaling that detentions and deportations are not expected to slow down in the coming months.
“Put yourself in the shoes of the guys in the street strung out on crazy op tempo, being threatened and antagonized all day, having inept leadership, low morale, and then having to fight every formerly low risk non-crim (or barely crim) because they are all hyped up on victim status and liberal energy. Plus hyper partisan radicalization on both sides,” the June 2025 member wrote. “If you think the news is enraging you now, wait till this spring/summer when we need to fill the mega detention centers.”
