An ICE official familiar with the way internal investigations are conducted at the agency reviewed the records WIRED obtained. The official, who asked not to be named because they are not authorized to speak to the media, says that because ICE agents collectively query confidential law enforcement databases “many millions of times a year,” the presence of a few “bad apples” is inevitable and not particularly surprising.

But legal experts and privacy advocates who reviewed the data resoundingly disagree with the ICE official’s characterization of the issue as likely isolated to a handful of problematic officers.

“This isn’t about a few bad apples, it’s about a tree that’s rotten to the core,” says Albert Fox Cahn, the founder and executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP). “There’s no version of mass surveillance that’s compatible with civil rights.”

Erik Garcia, an organizer and program manager with the Long Beach Immigrant Rights Coalition, a Southern California-based migrant advocacy organization, says ICE agents’ abuse of confidential databases “very much is the culture of abuse and unchecked power at ICE. It’s part of the culture of policing generally, which makes me question whether they should be collecting this data in the first place.”

ICE is already under increased scrutiny for how agents are misusing the law enforcement tools at their disposal. In February, for example, the DHS inspector general released a report detailing how agents at ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) division conducted illegal surveillance of cell phones using a controversial tool called a cell-site simulator. 

Earlier this month, a WIRED investigation revealed how ICE used customs summonses to demand data from elementary schools, news organizations, and abortion clinics in ways that experts say could be illegal. “Calling ICE a rogue agency doesn’t even quite get at how bad the problem is with them,” said Emily Tucker, the executive director at the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law, in response to those findings. “They are always pushing to the limits of what they are allowed to do and fudging around the edges without oversight.”