gizmodo.com
Cue another interminable entry in the annals of right-wingers complaining they can’t get dates, though this time there’s a twist!
The FBI issued a warning in February of this year that “as of late January 2026, a small group of women allegedly were creating fictitious online dating profiles with the purpose of attracting and then doxxing law enforcement participating in immigration enforcement,” according to documents obtained by Property of the People and shared with The Guardian.
The memo implied that ICE officers should be wary of any woman that knows they’re an ICE agent, especially if they go out of their way to seem cool with ICE agents or identify themselves as tradwives. (Those are conservative women who dress like the women in _The Sound of Music_ , but without the opposition to the Anschluss. They’re rare enough in reality that the going rate for a professional matchmaker to find one is reportedly $25k).
“These profiles were incorporating imagery of a ‘traditional wife’ aesthetic and listing specific interests in an attempt to appeal to … individuals in law enforcement,” the FBI wrote. “The objective was to lure affiliated law enforcement personnel into an online or in-person interaction under the guise of a date, after which the individuals would be publicly exposed and doxed online.”
“The tactic is intended to generate public embarrassment and deter immigration enforcement activity,” the FBI added. It did not provide any specifics on where or when it observed the supposed doxxing operation, and conceded all information in the memo was “not finally evaluated intelligence.”
The origin of the warning may well be a thinly sourced January 2026 post by the New York Post, which cited two TikTok posts from women stating they were using dating apps to identify ICE agents, as well as a single post by another female user urging gay men on Grindr to do the same. That post itself was inspired by another post from LibsOfTikTok, a homophobic and racist account that is ultra-popular with conservatives. The FBI wrote in the memo its information came from a “collaborative source.”
At the time, Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin claimed that identifying a federal officer via their dating app profiles is “a felony.” (It is not. The Constitution protects publishing the names of federal officers or information about how they conduct their official duties, and ICE has failed to make good on some of its threats to prosecute doxxers before. Just don’t escalate to releasing private information, encouraging third-party harassment, or physical stalking.)
In a statement to The Guardian, the FBI wrote it “regularly shares information” with other agencies and aims to ensure police are “safe from threats or violence while performing their duties.” Former FBI agent Mike German mocked the warning, telling the paper, “The rightwing echo chamber creates threats and the government’s intelligence apparatus just repeats those threats without any context… They must have run out of other threats.”
It should surprise no one to learn that dating apps are much riskier for undocumented immigrants than a random ICE officer. An internal ICE memo from 2012 obtained by the Brennan Center for Justice claims to forbid agents from using fake online identities to communicate with suspects, but times have changed. The agency has shown virtually no restraint under Trump and escalated its usage of ruses. The League of United Latin American Citizens has called attention to rumors that ICE agents use dating apps to locate individuals they suspect of immigration violation, citing rumors that the agency offers financial incentives for agents with higher arrest rates. (FactCheck.org reported that DHS denies this, although ICE does offer local police who join immigration task forces performance-based bonuses, and the agency is allegedly facing ever-increasing quotas.)
What’s likely more of a risk for undocumented individuals is face recognition and commercial ad data. ICE officers can feed a photo of anyone into a facial recognition app called “Mobile Fortify,” monitor social media with apps like SocialNet, and look at vast troves of commercially available location data without a warrant. One surveillance app that includes ICE on its client list is Penlink’s Webloc, a tool which can pull advertising geolocation data for entire neighborhoods and search through photos to locate individuals with face recognition. Penlink explicitly advertises one of its data sources as Tinder. In May, Politico reported that ICE published a request for information (indicating interest in a vendor) to expand use of “commercial Big Data and Ad Tech providers” in investigations.
