The Segal Effect: What a BU Republican Reveals About ICE’s Expanding Social Media Surveillance
- Cole Nemes & Harper Gold
- 5 minutes ago
- 6 min read
On the morning of November 4, 2025, more than two dozen federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents descended on the Allston Car Wash in Boston, blocking entrances and demanding identification from employees. The workers—five women and four men—were given no opportunity to retrieve documentation from lockers before being detained. Nine individuals, most from Central America and originally seeking to escape poverty and gang violence, were taken into federal custody and remain detained as of mid-November. All workers had work permits and none had a criminal history.
Three days later, on November 7, Zac Segal, president of the Boston University College Republicans (BUCR), posted a celebratory message on X that would illuminate the intersection between private citizen activism and federal enforcement. “I’ve been calling ICE for months on end,” Segal wrote. “This week they finally responded to my request to detain these criminals. As someone who lives in the neighborhood, I’ve seen how American jobs are being given away to those with no right to be here. Pump up the numbers!”
Segal, a junior at the university who was born in the U.S. and grew up in England, presented himself as a guardian of American employment, invoking imagery of stolen jobs to justify his months-long campaign against the car wash. Yet, the incident sparked immediate backlash. Boston City Councilor Liz Breadon, who arrived at the scene during the raid, stated she had spoken with “many, many neighbors” who viewed the action as indefensible. An immigration attorney quoted in the Boston Globe noted that Segal likely “called ICE based on the appearance of the workers” and “did so to promote himself, his anti-immigration views, or his online presence, without even thinking of those hard-working people who would be affected by his actions; their families, who would be thrown into turmoil."
Coverage of the events quickly expanded. The New York Times published a detailed report exploring the atmosphere at Boston University after the raid and Segal’s post, describing exchanges among students, many of whom expressed outrage over the use of campus organizations to prompt federal enforcement against vulnerable workers. Student leaders and activists spoke to the paper about fears for international peers, worries about the university’s inclusivity, and calls for Boston University to respond. The Boston Globe also repeatedly covered the story, focusing closely on Segal’s role and the broader political context at BU. According to the Globe, Segal’s months-long push involved contacting ICE repeatedly and publicizing his efforts, even before the November raid. After backlash intensified, Segal posted another X statement on November 14, reaffirming he did what “any American should do,” writing “I care deeply about America, American workers, and our future. My only goal has ever been to keep this country strong and safe.”
The College Republicans of America, however, issued a statement: “We applaud Zac Segal, President of our Boston University College Republicans chapter, for his service to his community by reporting the presence of illegal aliens at Allston Car Wash.... Zac Segal is a hero, and we are proud to call him one of our own. We call on all College Republicans to follow in the lead of this great patriot and notify their local ICE forces of any known illegal activity in their communities immediately."
As the Segal case has come to symbolize the integration of digital surveillance, immigration enforcement, and public backlash, it also highlights the specific connection between ICE and social media—and its real-world impact on individuals.
Currently, ICE utilizes multiple parts of the United States’s colossal surveillance infrastructure to help carry out its operations under the Trump Administration’s expansive immigration goals. This includes monitoring social media, where 253 million Americans (roughly 73% of the population) have unique accounts across popular platforms like YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. For some time, ICE has been using a software known as SocialNet, which helps the agency track locations, lifestyles, and internet behavior—practices whose legality has been previously challenged by groups such as the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
However, a newly signed $5.7 million contract between ICE and Carahsoft Technologies (a government IT provider) has greatly expanded the agency’s power in digital supervision. With this agreement, ICE has access to a platform known as Zignal Labs, an AI-powered surveillance application. An informational pamphlet marked confidential details how the software is “highly scalable” and capable of analyzing over 8 billion social media posts per day, “based on specific mission parameters and established criteria.” Furthermore, Zignal Labs can help its users locate “indications of potential threats,” as the pamphlet cites an example in which security officials responded to digital threats made to Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh via X. Importantly, Zignal Labs itself issued a statement in which its CEO, Adam Beaugh, said that its government partnerships will enable officials to “detect and respond to threats with greater clarity and speed.”
Zignal Labs joins an already robust arsenal of digital surveillance tools that ICE will continue to use under the Trump Administration's direction. As mentioned, SocialNet has been a frequently employed mechanism, analyzing data from over 200 websites and social media apps. Babel X, an AI-powered risk analysis platform similar to Zignal Labs, is also commonly used for immigration enforcement, as it allows users to “input a piece of information about a target—their name, email address, or telephone number—and receive a bevy of data in return.” More recently, Palantir, a data analysis platform that has had federal contracts since 2010, has received $113 million in federal funds since Trump reclaimed office. Notably, in May 2025, $30 million of those funds went to Palantir for designing a database system called “immigrationOS.” This digital framework is intended to assist “selection and apprehension operations” aligned with immigration enforcement priorities.
And the Trump Administration shows no signs of decelerating ICE’s usage of social media surveillance. Reported in early October 2025, ICE has plans to hire 30 new contractors to “run a multiyear surveillance program” out of its facilities in Vermont and Southern California. Their objective is to sift through social media platforms like Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, “converting posts and profiles into fresh leads for enforcement raids.” These new surveillance units were also reported to “receive tips…and [use] the results…to plan arrests.”
However, ICE turning citizen tips into tangible action is not a novel idea. In fact, social media has greatly helped the agency conduct actual enforcement operations, rather than merely gather data. For example, in the highly visible arrest of pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, many noted that he had been included on a so-called “deport list” posted on X by the pro-Israel group Canary Mission, which is often described as anonymous, shadowy, or ultrazionist. Arguably, ICE then used this list to determine the whereabouts of Khalil and others and arrest them. Relatedly, on October 21, 2025, more than 50 federal agents swept across New York City’s culturally vibrant Canal Street in Lower Manhattan, arresting nine African vendors and immigrants. Leading up to the raid, right-wing influencers posted viral videos of some of the vendors online, which prompted users to call for ICE to deport them. One of the videos, posted on X by right-wing personality Savannah Hernandez, even garnered over 4 million views. While not directly causal, ICE’s increased social media surveillance and the arrests of several individuals—coinciding with online calls for their deportation—represent a notable trend.
The Segal case becomes legible only when understood within this broader institutional context. Segal acted within a system that ICE has designed to convert public tips into enforcement intelligence and, importantly, action. To reinforce this system, ICE maintains a public tip line and actively encourages citizens to report suspected immigration violations. The agency has built or bought the technological capacity to rapidly process public reports, potentially transforming social media posts into lead assignments for field offices within hours or minutes.
What makes the Segal case particularly instructive in this context is that it demonstrates the two-way flow of information between citizens and the state. ICE did not initiate contact with Segal; rather, Segal initiated contact with ICE, and the agency responded by deploying agents to the location he identified. In this dynamic, private citizens become active participants in the enforcement apparatus, and social media becomes the medium through which these reports get translated into federal enforcement actions. Bottom line, the workers detained at the Allston Car Wash faced sudden federal detention based on a citizen’s report. Their struggle illustrates the possible consequences of a citizen-driven enforcement system—and perhaps foreshadows a far more expansive surveillance apparatus. One in which outcomes are generated not by individuals alone, but by continuous algorithms that operate across the entire digital landscape, especially on social media.