The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has circulated a “Be on the Lookout” alert to law enforcement nationwide, targeting a comedian whose satire of US immigration enforcement went viral.
The subject of the alert, known as a “Bolo”, was Ben Palmer, a Nashville-based standup comedian and prankster who created a parody anti-immigration tip website. His revealing videos of calls with members of the public who thought they were reporting immigrants to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have garnered millions of views on TikTok and YouTube.
The DHS bulletin was issued by the department’s Nashville field office in February, about a week before the Washington Post profiled Palmer after a kindergarten teacher reported one of her student’s parents to Palmer’s supposed-tip page on spurious grounds, thinking she was communicating with the government.
The Bolo was then shared by the Illinois State Police to a distribution list of state and local law enforcement agencies. The alert on Palmer was obtained by the Chicago-based journalism nonprofit Injustice Watch through a public records request about an unrelated matter. It was not immediately clear how many other law enforcement departments around the US may also have shared the federal alert, as Injustice Watch was investigating matters in Illinois.
The alert was headlined “online immigration impersonation” and noted that Palmer, who is a US citizen, “operates a satirical website impersonating a submission form, which acts as a mechanism for reporting suspected illegal aliens”. The Bolo included a screenshot from Palmer’s spoof tip website and two screenshots from his YouTube channel, which had 807,000 subscribers at the time it was captured, along with his photograph.
While Palmer’s site does use language such as “official report form” and says reports are “submitted through official federal channels”, the comedian doesn’t claim to work for ICE and the privacy policy contains a disclaimer that the site is “for parody”.
Near the bottom of the Bolo alert, DHS acknowledged the comedian did not pose a danger. “At this time, there appears to be no direct threat to life or infrastructure,” the alert reads.
In an email responding to questions, a DHS spokesperson said: “There is no ‘investigation’ into this individual – this document is an internal memo shared for awareness purposes only” adding that “law enforcement and civilians should be aware of potential websites and individuals impersonating federal law enforcement”.
Palmer said he didn’t know about the Bolo until an Injustice Watch reporter told him about it. He called it a badge of honor to be singled out by the government for his comedy, though he also expressed concern that such monitoring could escalate into something more serious, such as being arrested.
“To be honest, for me, it’s the best of both worlds. I don’t get arrested but I still get to say that the Department of Homeland Security created a document about me, which is … in my line of work I always look at these things as more like certificates, badges of honor,” he said.
He added: “The government wastes a lot of time in tax dollars, for sure, but when you have your own little section on that, it’s kind of like, I feel honored.”
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’” reflecting the seriousness of the threat they describe. They are typically issued nationwide and are usually reserved for serious threats to public safety.
Reeves said he understood why federal immigration authorities would be wary of a fake tip line but he thought a Bolo being issued for a comedian was “unusual”.
Illinois’s Statewide Terrorism and Intelligence Center shared the alert about Palmer to its email list “for situational awareness purposes”.
Brendan Kelly, the Illinois state police director, did not respond to questions about why his agency shared the Bolo about Palmer. But a spokesperson for the agency, Melaney Arnold, said in an email that the terrorism and intelligence center “routinely and quickly disseminates information produced by other federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies” and does so “with the understanding that the originating agencies have done their investigative due diligence to disseminate credible and important information”.
Palmer isn’t the first comedian targeted by 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. Potylo, a musician and comedian, was also detained by federal officers in Portland, Oregon, last year. In 2018, DHS agents showed up at the Brooklyn home of comedian Jake Flores after he posted a series of satirical tweets about ICE.
Esha Bhandari, who directs the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, said the Bolo could be understood as part of a pattern of DHS targeting private citizens who are critical of the agency.
The federal agency has to know, Bhandari said, “that by taking any official law enforcement action against someone, that they’re intending to scare people away from speaking out against them”.
Palmer said he hopes to garner support from first amendment attorneys now that his name has been distributed to law enforcement agencies nationwide. But he said it won’t dissuade him from his work.
“I don’t want to get arrested,” Palmer said, adding: “But it would be nice to have a footnote in the history of comedy.”
This story was produced by Injustice Watch, a nonprofit newsroom in Chicago that investigates issues of equity and justice in the Cook county court system.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: theguardian.com
