A mom in Texas wanted to know which corporations were making money off Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. So she did the least dramatic thing imaginable: she started digging through public records, government contracts, and corporate filings, put it all online, and handed Americans a map of exactly who was profiting from ICE.
And then people used it. They protested. They organized. They yanked their money out of a bank financing private detention companies. Cities moved hundreds of millions of dollars. And eventually Citizens Bank announced it was cutting ties with two of the biggest private detention contractors working with ICE.
That’s how this is supposed to work. You see your government doing something you think is wrong, you find out who’s enabling it, and you use your rights to peacefully push back. It worked so well that the Department of Homeland Security took notice — and according to USA Today, circulated a secret intelligence bulletin to law enforcement that specifically flagged this woman’s website in connection with potential domestic terrorism.
So let’s line that up. Americans peacefully protested, boycotted, moved their own money, and used public information to expose who’s cashing in on the deportation machine — and the woman who helped them do it landed in a federal intelligence bulletin. Yeah. We need to talk about this.
Her name is Laura Berlin — a Texas mother of two who started digging after watching people get flown to a prison in El Salvador. Her question was simple: who’s making money off this?
She researched ICE contractors and built an interactive map of the companies involved in detention, transportation, surveillance, the whole apparatus. Two names sat near the top: GEO Group and CoreCivic, which per USA Today were awarded nearly a billion dollars combined by ICE in the first year of the crackdown. She kept pulling threads and found that while some major banks had pledged to stop working with private detention companies, Citizens Bank was still financing them. So she posted that too.
That’s where it gets good.
Activists found Berlin’s research and did the math: if Citizens Bank wanted to bankroll companies profiting from the crackdown, its customers could decide they didn’t want Citizens holding their money. A coalition started organizing. What began as an obscure campaign exploded after two fatal shootings involving federal immigration officers poured fuel on the anger — Berlin’s site went from a few thousand visits to nearly 10 million hits.
By March, activists had 70 protests planned at Citizens Bank branches. By June, 140 protests across 17 states. Individual customers pledged to pull $25 million. Then local governments joined in — Jersey City announced it would move $265 million out of Citizens Bank; Montclair, New Jersey voted to pull another $90 million.
Now we’re talking real money. And then Citizens announced it would stop financing GEO Group and CoreCivic. The bank insists this was purely a business decision, “changing commercial circumstances,” nothing to do with the pressure. Sure. Maybe hundreds of millions of dollars strolling toward the exit was just a happy coincidence. Either way the result’s the same: people found where the money went, organized peacefully, applied economic pressure, and the bank walked.
I want to sit on that, because there’s been so much rage around ICE — and this is the model. Nobody has to attack an agent. Nobody has to burn down a building. You investigate. You organize. You protest. You boycott. You vote. You expose where the money goes. You use your constitutional rights.
That’s not terrorism. That’s democracy. And you’d think the United States government would know the difference.
Apparently not.
Per USA Today, DHS circulated an intelligence bulletin in February that specifically singled out Berlin’s website, warning that anti-ICE actors — including what it called “local anarchist extremists” — could escalate peaceful action into vandalism or violence.
I’m a former cop, so let me be precise about where the line is. If there’s credible intelligence someone’s planning violence, investigate it. If someone threatens an agent, investigate it. If someone’s plotting an attack, stop them. That’s the job. But there’s a canyon between investigating a specific person because you have evidence of a crime, and hoovering up intelligence around lawful political activity because somebody adjacent to the broader movement might, someday, turn violent.
And here’s the genuinely disturbing part: the bulletin reportedly acknowledges — in red letters — that some of what it describes involves First Amendment-protected activity. They knew.
Publishing public records isn’t terrorism. Protesting outside a bank isn’t terrorism. Boycotting a company isn’t terrorism. Taking your own money out of your own account is definitely not terrorism. You don’t have to agree with a single one of these protesters — support ICE, support Trump’s policies, think everyone outside Citizens Bank is full of it. They still have rights. That’s the entire point of rights. The First Amendment was never built to protect people saying what the government likes. You don’t need protection when you’re agreeing with the government. You need it when you’re pissing it off.
This is where my old job makes it especially infuriating. Law enforcement intelligence exists to protect the public from real threats — not to shield Donald Trump from opposition, not to shield ICE from criticism, and sure as hell not to shield private corporations from Americans finding out who they do business with. Peaceful protesters don’t become violent extremists just because they’re mad at the same agency. Once you start treating a movement or an ideology as inherently suspicious instead of focusing on actual criminal conduct, you’ve crossed a very dangerous line.
And it’s not a one-off. USA Today points to a pattern — pressure on Apple over an ICE-tracking app, DHS scrutiny of left-leaning labor and climate groups, an investigation into a man who emailed the ICE director. Over and over, opposition to this administration’s immigration policy keeps getting translated into the language of threats and extremism.
Berlin didn’t stop at the contractors. She followed the campaign cash, and her database found more than 450 candidates around the country who’d taken contributions from the biggest ICE contractors. And here’s where she earns real respect: she didn’t make it a partisan hit list. There are Republicans on it — Trump, Greg Abbott, Katie Britt. There are Democrats on it too.
Good. Expose all of them. If you’re an elected official taking money from corporations that profit off government policy, the public has every right to know. Don’t want people finding out who funded you? Don’t take the money.
That’s what gets me most. Laura Berlin didn’t have a giant organization behind her. She was one mom with a laptop asking where the money was going. Then Americans saw it and realized they had power — not imaginary internet power, actual power. They protested. They organized. They moved their money. They leaned on their local governments. They made doing business with ICE contractors more expensive and more toxic. And it worked.
Then her website turned up in a federal terrorism bulletin. Maybe that’s a coincidence too. But this part isn’t up for debate: the government should be extraordinarily careful before it collects or circulates intelligence on Americans engaged in lawful political activity. Because there’s already a name for people who oppose government policy without breaking the law.
Citizens.
And if the administration thinks dragging peaceful activism under this kind of scrutiny will scare everyone quiet, this story says the opposite. Berlin says she’s not stopping — she’s still digging, now into the companies that gather the data used to find and locate immigrants. Good. Keep following the money. Keep publishing public information. Keep protesting peacefully. Keep voting. And if corporations decide profiting off the crackdown isn’t worth losing customers and watching hundreds of millions walk out the door — that’s not intimidation. That’s the free market.
They found out who was profiting from ICE. They followed the money. They fought back peacefully. And it worked.
Maybe that’s exactly why the government is so nervous.
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