Dhruv Mehrotra

This ICE sniper-training contractor caught a gun-under-the-influence charge, per Lexis.
/ht @agordon.me

This is literally what CURRENT LAW requires. It’s in the Constitution! www.politico.com/news/2026/02...

ICE Records Reveal How Agents Abuse Access to Secret Data Documents obtained by WIRED detail hundreds of investigations by the US agency into alleged database misuse that includes harassment, stalking, and more.

I filed this FOIA after publishing this investigation into ICE agents abusing law-enforcement databases. www.wired.com/story/ice-ag....

Those records are here:
airtable.com/appxK2tDF0YA...

The spreadsheet covers roughly 5 years (ending 3/2023) and includes disciplinary outcomes tied to alleged unauthorized database access, improper use or disclosure of information, and stalking or harassment.

The records don’t include much context about the underlying misconduct

2023-ICFO-16340

FOIA data shows ICE employees accused of harassment and abusing law-enforcement databases (including Palantir's systems) were often disciplined unevenly, with outcomes limited to verbal counseling, written reprimands, or short suspensions. The records are here:

Chuck Schumer Voice: ICE Death Cards must henceforth include both a phone and fax number

Pretty sure this one’s free to read per WIREDs policy on stories based on public records

In 2023, @wired.com analyzed ICE’s own subpoena-tracking database and found agents issued 1509 summonses more than 170,000 times from 2016–2022 — often for records unrelated to customs, including schools, abortion providers, election offices, nonprofits, and newsrooms.

ICE Is Grabbing Data From Schools and Abortion Clinics An agency database WIRED obtained reveals widespread use of so-called 1509 summonses that experts say raises the specter of potential abuse.

Admin subpoenas are back in the spotlight. Worth remembering ICEs use of a similar tool: hundreds of thousands of warrantless “customs summonses,” often for non-customs cases sent for info about journalists, students, and abortion clinics, with no oversight.

wired.com/story/ice-1509-custom-summons/

Basically it’s just an internal alert cops use to tell each other to watch for this person or car. Stands for Be On The Look Out

Lenexa police investigated author of column criticizing the department. He's 'pissed off' A KCUR investigation discovered the department used the city’s license plate readers to track the writer’s movements and it issued a “be on the lookout” for him.

Police used the city’s license plate readers to track a local writer’s movements, then issued a BOLO on him.

No charge, and he was the wrong suspect.

www.kcur.org/politics-ele...

Sworn court testimony reveals conditions at hastily assembled Alligator Alcatraz Former detainees also shared stories of “abuse” and being forced to sign deportation papers.

amp.miamiherald.com/news/politic...

ICE Deportation Flights Are Getting Longer and Crueler A private equity-owned airline profits off Trump’s migrant crackdown.

NEW: Meet the private-equity firm -- and its billionaire immigrant CEO -- making millions off some of ICE's cruelest deportation flights.

After a five-month investigation, my story for @motherjones.com:

www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

Here is the User Guide for ELITE, the Tool Palantir Made for ICE 404 Media is publishing a version of the user guide for ELITE, which lets ICE bring up dossiers on individual people and provides a “confidence score” of their address.

New from 404 Media: here is the user guide for ELITE, the tool Palantir made for ICE. A map shows people on a map; ICE clicks them, brings up their dossier. ICE uses to find which neighborhoods to target. We obtained it, you can now read the document for yourself: www.404media.co/here-is-the-...

He Leaked the Secrets of a Southeast Asian Scam Compound. Then He Had to Get Out Alive A source trapped inside an industrial-scale scamming operation contacted me, determined to expose his captors’ crimes—and then escape. This is his story.

Last year, a human trafficking victim trapped in a crypto scam compound in the Golden Triangle region of Laos contacted me. He then proceeded to leak to me a huge collection of the compound's internal materials.

Then he had to get out alive. This is his story.

🧵👇 www.wired.com/story/he-lea...

Didn’t realize that, thanks. In the future i won’t summarize

I summarized the screenshot in the alt text instead of transcribing it…that was a mistake. I honestly didn’t know that was an incorrect way to use alt text.

But jumping straight to bad-faith accusations over an error is silly, unnecessary, and discouraging.

I humbly ask you to relax a bit.

‘They're Not Breathing’: Inside the Chaos of ICE Detention Center 911 Calls Records of hundreds of emergency calls from ICE detention centers obtained by WIRED—including audio recordings—show a system inundated by life-threatening incidents, delayed treatment, and overcrowdin...

In June, @dell.bsky.social and I wrote a story based on 911 calls from ICE detention centers. Not reported at the time were four calls that referenced hunger strikes.

One described a man on day 20 of a hunger strike in South Texas.

Another detail buried in the document:

ICE reports two people subjected to force feeding or other involuntary medical procedures, but only one appears in ICE’s patient-tracking system.

Not sure what to make of that.

ICE just quietly updated its hunger strike data.

From July 1 to Sept 30, 106 people went on hunger strike.

Two people in ICE custody were subjected to force-feeding or involuntary medical measures this summer

As of Dec 2, ICE reports 14 ongoing hunger strikes

www.ice.gov/doclib/deten...

It’s matplotlib and pandas for viz. Truth Brush to grab the posts.

Oh cool! I missed this.

Musk tweet times

Obviously inspired by this

Trump truth social posting times. Date on the x-axis, time of day on the y-axis, dot size = posting bursts. Data scraped from truth social.

Made a chart…in case you needed one to show you that the president posts entirely too much.

Data scraped from truth social.

No shade to my former employer, but what’s missing from this story is that the same Mormon anti-porn nonprofit behind Relay previously launched a “shameware” app that pinged Facebook when you masturbated — and sent FB your password in plaintext.

A cache of 18,000 emails offers another window into Epstein’s mind. Bloomberg parsed Amazon receipts from that inbox—filtering, verifying, and cataloging book orders—to build this timeline.

Jeffrey Epstein Email Trove Reveals Ghislaine Maxwell’s Secrets A cache of 18,000 messages obtained by Bloomberg News reveals Maxwell’s deep ties and involvement with the disgraced financier and sex offender.

NEW: We got access to Jeffrey Epstein’s personal Yahoo inbox — more than 18,000 emails.

It shows Epstein’s world in his own words: an unfiltered look at how his operation worked, who enabled it, and how Ghislaine Maxwell stayed at the center of it all.

Hack Exposes Kansas City’s Secret Police Misconduct List A major breach of the Kansas City, Kansas, Police Department reveals, for the first time, a list of alleged officer misconduct including dishonesty, sexual harassment, excessive force, and false arres...

For one of my final stories with @wired.com, I teamed up with @peggylowe.bsky.social at KCUR to dig through a Kansas City, KS police hack

Inside were some of the most disturbing misconduct files I’ve ever read—and a secret list of cops the department said couldnt be trusted

Here are a few of them: