DHS Issues a Nationwide Alert Against a Comedian for Making a Parody ICE Snitch Site

The Department of Homeland Security has issued a “Be on the Lookout” (BOLO) alert—normally reserved for major suspects and threats—to law enforcement agencies across the country. The alert target is Ben Palmer, a comedian from Nashville who created a parody website mocking ICE’s tip submission system, which is a glorified snitch line.

The Guardian has the details:

The Bolo was issued by the DHS’s Nashville field office in February, about a week before the Washington Post profiled Palmer. While Palmer’s site uses language such as “official report form,” the comedian doesn’t claim to work for ICE and the privacy policy contains a disclaimer that the site is “for parody.” … In an email, a DHS spokesperson said: “There is no ‘investigation’ into this individual—this document is an internal memo shared for awareness purposes only.” …

Darius Reeves, a retired ICE field office director, said Bolos more commonly include terms such as “‘considered armed and dangerous,’ ‘approach with caution’ or ‘do not approach at all.’” He said a Bolo being issued for a comedian was “unusual.” …

Palmer isn’t the first comedian targeted by the DHS under the Trump administration for satirizing immigration enforcement. Earlier this year, federal officers took down and detained Rob Potylo while he was wearing a giraffe costume and demonstrating against ICE in Minneapolis. In 2018, DHS agents showed up at the Brooklyn home of comedian Jake Flores after he posted satirical tweets about ICE.

The First Amendment provides satirists and prank artists with significant protections, making a nationwide federal law enforcement alert an extraordinary response to what is likely constitutionally allowed political speech. (Our correspondent, Jacob Grier, who protested ICE as an inflatable dachshund has, so far at least, avoided provoking a BOLO of his own!)

The government has a legitimate interest in ensuring the integrity of its reporting systems—and Palmer’s site did fool many callers who genuinely believed they were tipping off ICE. But being fooled while trying to report your neighbor to immigration authorities is a different kind of harm than the disruption of a federal law enforcement process, and DHS’s own alert acknowledged no investigation was underway. That makes the widely circulated bulletin look less like a public safety measure and more like an attempt to track a vocal critic.

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