A new lawsuit alleges DHS illegally tracked and intimidated observers
Source: NPR
Updated February 23, 2026 3:06 PM ET
Last month, Colleen Fagan was observing an immigration enforcement operation at an apartment complex in Portland, Maine, when federal agents scanned her face with a smartphone and appeared to record her car license plate number. In a social media video she recorded, Fagan can be heard asking why the agent was taking her information. What the agent said next made the video go viral. "Cause we have a nice little database," the masked agent said. "And now you're considered a domestic terrorist."
Fagan, who is a social worker, has now joined a federal class action lawsuit that argues the Department of Homeland Security and a number of its sub-agencies are violating the First Amendment and are taking actions "designed to chill, suppress, and control speech that they do not like."
"A federal agent called me a domestic terrorist just because I recorded agents operating in public in my community. But I have a right to do that, and so do others," Fagan said in a statement. "I want people to know how important it is to use our First Amendment rights to observe and document what is happening. Peaceful dissent is not a crime." Though Fagan's video went viral, her full name had not been widely publicized until this lawsuit.
The suit, filed by the legal nonprofit Protect Democracy and the law firms Dunn Isaacson Rhee and Drummond Woodsum, alleges federal agents are unconstitutionally retaliating against people who are lawfully observing and recording federal immigration enforcement operations by gathering their personal information and labeling them domestic terrorists.
Read more: https://www.npr.org/2026/02/23/nx-s1-5722988/dhs-lawsuit-biometrics-domestic-terrorism
Link to Protect Democracy PRESS RELEASE - Defending Maine communities from federal surveillance and intimidation
Link to SUIT (PDF) - https://protectdemocracy.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Hilton-v-Noem-ECF-1-Complaint-.pdf
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