41,000 DHS Employees’ Names Leaked in Major Hack

A nonprofit news leak group has released records on more than 41,000 employees of the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS), including personnel involved in President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement operations.

According to reports from AFP, Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoSecrets) said on Wednesday that it received the sensitive information from a hacktivist group called the Department of Peace. 

The group developed a tool known as Icepick, which allows users to search detailed records containing employees’ names, offices and assignments.

Activist Maia Arson Crimew, who is associated with the group, described the dataset as significant in both scale and impact, saying it offers an unusually detailed picture of DHS’s internal structure.

According to Crimew, the records show the responsibilities of personnel across several DHS agencies, including US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

“This dataset is massive in terms of both size and impact,” Crimew said in a DDOS statement.

“It provides an unprecedented look into the Department of Homeland Security’s organisational structure, highlighting which people do what work across multiple DHS agencies, including ICE,” the activist said, referring to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

DDoSecrets co-founder Emma Best also described the disclosure as an exceptional leak, saying the information identifies officials overseeing covert operations, investigations into government leaks and personnel involved in deportation and rendition programmes.

DHS and ICE have played central roles in Trump’s immigration crackdown, which began when he returned to the White House in January 2025. The campaign has resulted in thousands of undocumented migrants being detained and deported, while some US citizens have also been caught up in enforcement operations.

Last month, DHS announced plans for an expanded enforcement operation in so-called sanctuary cities, jurisdictions that restrict cooperation between local law enforcement agencies and federal immigration authorities.

The move came as the Trump administration heightened its efforts to detain and deport migrants.

The non-partisan Migration Policy Institute reported that the department had increased arrests and deportations in recent months, exceeding the enforcement levels recorded under former President Joe Biden.

The institute estimated that DHS, including ICE, carried out about 980,000 deportations during the first 18 months of Trump’s second term.