The FBI has launched an investigation into Signal chat groups allegedly used by anti-ICE activists to impede and obstruct federal immigration authorities, Director Kash Patel revealed Monday.
“The Signal chat group is information we collect from the public,” Patel explained during an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity.
“[O]n this type of specific investigation, what you do, generally speaking, is you send out subpoenas, you collect data, you put people in grand juries, and you find out who broke the law and if anyone broke the law and incited violence,” the FBI director continued.
“This Signal chat is something that we, the FBI, are looking at and spearheading,” he added.
Patel’s announcement comes days after independent journalist Cam Higby purportedly infiltrated a group chat on the encrypted messaging app used by activists to track Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis.
The Signal chat showed some activists spent their “shifts” searching for vehicles used by federal law enforcement, while others worked as “plate checkers” to confirm or update a database of tracking information, according to Higby.
“Commuters” would then be dispatched to follow the vehicles — which in some cases turned out not to be law enforcement — and protest their presence, the independent journalist found.
The Signal group was often maxed out with some 1,000 activists in the same thread and 50 people on an ongoing group call.
“We are not going after people and infringing on their freedom of speech to peacefully protest,” Patel cautioned. “We are definitely not going after people and their Second Amendment right to bear arms.
“Only if you incite violence and or threaten to do harm to law enforcement officials and break the law in any other way, does it become an investigatory matter.”
