ICE is gaming Google searches regarding mass deportations, report suggests
U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is allegedly altering publication dates on old press releases and skewing Google results for mass deportations, according to an investigation by the Guardian.
First documented by an immigration lawyer who spoke to the publication under anonymity, first page Google results for state specific deportation searches have been surfacing outdated press releases from the immigration agency, exacerbating an environment of fear as federal officials threaten ICE incursions in spaces like schools and workplaces. Later confirmed by the Guardian, thousands of ICE press releases describing deportation operations across the 50 states have been manipulated with new publication timestamps, with the earliest going as far back as 2008.
While the pages themselves are labeled as "archived content" on the ICE website itself, all of the organization's press releases now bear an HTML timestamp date of Jan. 24, 2025, implying, on first glance, a much broader immigration sweep touted by the Trump administration in its first 100 days.
UPDATE: Feb. 6, 2025, 1:59 p.m. EST
"The explanation here is very straightforward: the website in question added an ‘archived content’ bar to many of its press releases from 2024 and before (on a variety of topics), which is why the dates were updated in Search, as they were on other search engines as well. Our systems are not designed to boost a page's ranking simply because a timestamp is updated, and when people do these searches on Google, they find a range of sources including recent news articles," a Google spokesperson told Mashable.
In a statement sent to media outlets, Google explained that this applied to all of the agency's press releases, across a range of different topics not just pertaining to deportations. The new banner reads: "In an effort to keep ICE.gov current, the archive contains content from a previous administration or is otherwise outdated. This information is archived and not reflective of current practice." Gizmodo noted that similar HTML changes had occurred on ICE articles from Nov. 2024, but the same hadn't been done for other federal agencies.
Similar search results also appeared on Bing, according to a tech expert who evaluated the claim. "These are old articles that are now appearing at the top of the Google and Bing search results as recent headlines, where no other government agency is doing this. As someone in tech, I would interpret that as an intentional play to get more clicks, essentially on these misleading headlines," the expert told the Guardian.
President Donald Trump has pledged to crack down on immigration in what he hopes will be the "largest domestic deportation operation in the nation's history," including relocating migrant detainees to controversial military detention camp Guantanamo Bay.
Big Tech, meanwhile, has been bowing to many of Trump's demands, including the removal of content and policies related to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Trump's new righthand man and leader of DOGE, Elon Musk, has forcibly taken over several government databases, laid off employees, and shut down entire agencies in the last week.
UPDATE: Feb. 6, 2025, 4:48 p.m. EST This story was updated with additional information on the press releases' metadata and an updated quote from Google.