What government agencies or programs have been accused of indirectly funding anti-ICE activities in 2024?
Executive summary
In 2024 reporting, critics charged parts of the federal government not with directly funding anti-ICE groups but with using other agencies, programs and legal authorities to identify, surveil, or redirect resources around anti-ICE activity — a practice framed by advocates as indirect support for targeting dissent rather than the protesters themselves [1] [2]. The allegations center on broad directives and interagency data-sharing enabled by executive orders and guidance (which critics say facilitate surveillance of funders and supporters), and on DHS internal transfers and reprogramming that shift money and tools among homeland-security components [3] [4].
1. Federal strategy and memos: accused of targeting funders under NSPM-7
Legal and civil-liberties groups pointed to a national security memo that instructed federal law enforcement to investigate “institutional and individual funders” of political violence — language watchdogs said could be used to probe organizations that fund or support anti-ICE activity — and the FBI circulated guidance that broadened domestic-terrorism probes into protests, including those opposing ICE [2] [1]. The Brennan Center and The Guardian documented how NSPM-7’s framing of “anti-fascism” and “anti-ICE” protests as potential domestic terrorism created the grounds for targeting not just demonstrators but their financial and institutional backers [1] [2].
2. DHS components and reprogramming: transfers that reshape enforcement priorities
House appropriators and watchdogs criticized the Department of Homeland Security for moving funds between components — for example notifying Congress about transfers from Customs and Border Protection and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to ICE — a practice opponents say lets DHS steer money and operational capabilities toward enforcement and, indirectly, toward actions that crackdown on anti-ICE organizing [4]. The Brennan Center has warned that large, unrestricted funds inside DHS can be used as an enforcement “carrot” to induce state and local partners to pursue federal immigration priorities, a dynamic critics argue can indirectly finance operations that target activists and their networks [5].
3. Technology and surveillance programs: cross-agency resource use flagged as enabling targeting
Advocates and privacy groups documented ICE’s surge in procurement of social‑media monitoring, phone-location tools, drones and other surveillance gear and flagged how executive orders and interagency authorities can give ICE access to data and technologies held by other agencies — a mechanism characterized in reporting as an indirect way other government programs and tech contracts end up enabling investigations into anti-ICE protesters and funders [3] [6]. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and POLITICO reported that executive orders provided ICE “workarounds” to privacy standards and encouraged the agency to “identify all resources” across government, which critics say blurs lines between ordinary government programs and enforcement uses that affect civil-society actors [6] [3].
4. Alternative narratives and limits of the record
Officials and proponents of the memos and transfers argue the measures target organized political violence and protect public safety, insisting they are focused on criminal activity rather than lawful dissent — a framing noted in reporting from the Brennan Center and The Guardian that government officials used to justify broader investigative authorities [1] [2]. Reporting in the available sources does not identify a discrete list of non‑DHS agencies that in 2024 were proven to have intentionally funded anti-ICE activism; instead, the record shows allegations about how DHS-wide funds, executive-authority-driven data access, and FBI-led investigative priorities can be used to trace, monitor, or pressure organizations and donors linked to anti-ICE work [4] [3] [2]. Where sources make stronger claims — for example about reprogramming or surveillance procurements — they document policy shifts and transfers rather than direct grants to anti-ICE groups [4] [6].
5. Bottom line and reporting gaps
The clearest accusations in 2024 reporting were not that a named agency explicitly funded anti-ICE groups, but that federal strategies, memos (NSPM-7), DHS fund transfers, and cross‑agency surveillance programs created pathways for the government to identify and potentially disrupt the funding and support networks of anti-ICE activists — a pattern critics call indirect state-enabled targeting of dissent [2] [4] [3]. The sources reviewed document the tools, directives, and transfers that enable such activity, but they do not provide a definitive list of government programs that consciously earmarked funds to support anti-ICE organizing; that remains an evidentiary gap in the public record [1] [6].