Over the past few weeks, news of mass immigrant arrests has taken the US by storm. A report from Massachusetts to Idaho describes Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents spreading to the community and raising people. Google quickly searches ice operations, raids and arrests and returns a flood of government press releases. Headlines include “85 ice stops during the four-day Colorado business,” “New Orleans focuses on target operations for 123 criminals,” and Wisconsin’s “83 criminals arrested Includes ‘.
But if you look closely at these ice reports, there’s another story.
Four days of operation in Colorado? It happened in November 2010. 123 people targeting New Orleans? That was last February. Wisconsin? September 2018. This has thousands of examples across all 50 states. This is an ICE press release that reached the first page of Google’s search results and actually looks like an enforcement action that occurred months or years ago. Some of the arrests of “44 absconders” in Nebraska will return until 2008.
The archived ice press release that soars to the top of Google search results was marked with the same time stamp and read “Updated: 01/24/2025”.
The mystery first captured the attention of an immigration lawyer who began pursuing ice attacks and enforcement actions when Donald Trump took office. She spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing retaliation from the administration. Initially, when she clicked on these seemingly new press releases, she was confused and detailed an ice attack from over a decade ago.
There she tried to do digital thruzen and worked and helped a friend who was a technical expert. What they find leads them to believe ICE is a game of Google search.
ICE did not reply to requests for comment. A Google spokesperson said, “If you do these searches on Google, you will find a variety of sources and information, including recent news articles.” She said, “When the page was last updated.” It aims to reflect what it is, saying it is not designed to enhance the ranking of pages simply because it updates the timestamps.”
Placing immigration is at the top of Trump’s agenda. In his inaugural speech, he promised a massive deportation “to fight back the tragic invasion of our country.” Since then, his administration has touted hundreds of arrests and attacks in places like Los Angeles and Chicago. The TV crew has followed ice agents in the attack, and Homeland Security Secretary Christie Noem posted a video of herself on X wearing an ice bulletproof vest in New York City. She captioned.
That’s the moment it was made on ice television. Inundating all forms of media, including Google Search, with mass arrest stories fits the horrifying strategy, says Lindsay M Harris, a law professor at the University of San Francisco, who specializes in immigration and asylum law. I mentioned it.
“All of that is meant to send a message to immigrants to be afraid, and they’re coming for you,” Harris said. “The optics of these mass arrests across the country have a very realistic impact, regardless of their actual numbers.”
A pattern appears
Last month, immigration lawyers were shocked when reports of arrest were poured in. Social media and listserve, filled with rumours of the attack and local news programs, showed that ice unrest was 25,000 in a town as small as Cartersville, Georgia. “There was a lot of noise online,” she said. “And that was creating fear in the community.” She said it was difficult to separate facts from fiction, so she would create a national map that aggregates all the actual ice arrests. I’ve done it.
At the end of her work day, she sat down and started googling. Enter searches such as “Ice Arrest Nebraska” and “Recent Ice Arrest Arizona.” She then plugged in other states.
The lawyer noticed a strange pattern. In almost every state, at least one press release from Ice’s website has appeared in Google’s top results. Nebraska, for example, surfaced the links between two press releases. “Ice will run a federal search warrant in Nebraska,” one said, while the other said, “The Ice Fugitive Operations team will arrest 44 Absconders.” Both displayed publication dates on January 24, 2025 on Google Search. However, when the lawyer clicked on the report, the actual publication dates were August 2018 and June 2008, respectively.
“I’ve done it now in all 50 states…and I’ve done it in multiple cities, and that’s the same,” the lawyer said. “They all had their final update on 1/24/2025 and they were all in the foreground of the algorithm.”
Maria Andrade, a longtime immigration lawyer in Idaho, says the state has had few ice arrests so far. “There were things that didn’t lead to detention,” she said. “I’ve never heard of any mass arrests in any area.”
However, the first Google search results for “Idaho, Idaho” is a press release from Ice that 22 people have been arrested for “surge in enforcement.” The publication date displayed in the search results is January 24th, 2025, but the operation actually took place in July 2010. Andredo said 22 people are high numbers for Idaho and such cases are extremely rare given the minimum number. Ice agents, country terrain, extreme weather. If so many people were arrested in Idaho in one sweep last month, she said she knew about it.
“If the goal is to scare people searching for raids in Idaho, that would be a good way to achieve that,” Andredo said. “It’s a good way to mislead people.”
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The confusion and fear of ICE operations have real-world consequences for both immigrants and other law enforcement agencies. Idaho’s panic hit the pitch so hot that at least one local sheriff issued an official statement trying to quell the fear. “Rumours have spread about ice carrying out ‘raids’ in the area,” Blaine County Sheriff Morgan Barris announced last week. “These claims were completely unfounded and there was no evidence to support them.”
Solve the mystery
There are several ways to match games in Google Search with games, towards the top page of the results page, which is the most valuable real estate on the internet. In fact, an entire field called Search Engine Optimization or SEO is built around it. Google’s algorithm works by examining various factors on a web page to determine whether it is relevant and authoritative. Government web domains have already earned prestigious bonus points. Other tricks to fine-tune your algorithm include linking to your website and updating the timestamp on your web page to the most recent date.
After dealing with all the old ice press releases, the immigration lawyer called out her tech expert friend to help her get to the bottom of what’s going on.
Similarly, a technology expert who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation said she was initially skeptical of something extraordinary going on. However, she organized what her lawyers found and then did a Google search in January 2025 and specifically targeted ICE websites. She also tried Bing, Microsoft’s search engine. These searches returned nearly 13,000 archived ice press releases with timestamps until January 24, 2025.
“I said, ‘OK, this is pretty weird,” she said.
Bing did not reply to requests for comment.
She then began forensic examination of Ice’s webpage by inspecting the front-end code to find clues.
What’s interesting is that the ice marked all of these press releases as old, she said. The agency displayed a message at the top of every page. The Guardian confirmed it contains “archive content” that is “from previous administrations, or otherwise outdated.”
However, when technology experts looked into the codes for these online press releases, she saw new elements added – timestamps. “All articles were updated on the 24th, and Google SEO was interpreted as a recently updated article and therefore ranked highly,” she said.
To exhaust all the possibilities, technology experts performed the same tests as several other government agencies. She cross-checked with the Department of Labor, Department of Defense, Department of Interior and Veteran Affairs websites, but found no evidence of new timestamps.
“These are old articles (using ICE) that are currently appearing as recent headlines at the top of Google and Bing search results, and no other government agencies have done this,” she said. “As someone of high tech, I interpret it essentially as a deliberate play to get more clicks on these misleading headlines.”
