By: Lucaiah Smith-Miodownik, News Writer
Recently, Vancouver-based company Hootsuite has come under fire for its contract with the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the governmental agency which contains Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and US Customs and Border Protection.
Hootsuite is an “all-in-one social media management tool” designed to help individuals and businesses manage their online presence. The corporation signed onto an agreement with the DHS beginning in August 2024 through a third-party contractor. A message on the DHS website stated that the organization “will only use Hootsuite to manage DHS social media accounts listed on the DHS Social Media Directory to improve the delivery of information and services to the general public, while promoting transparency and accountability, as a service for those seeking information about, or services from, the Department.”
While set to expire in August of this year, the contract includes an optional renewal through mid-August 2029, amounting to a payout of up to $3.8 million.
This is not the first time Hootsuite has partnered with the DHS. The social media company signed a three-year contract with ICE in 2020, only to reverse course due to subsequent backlash. Similar resistance has occurred in recent weeks, but the company has no intention of voiding their agreement this time, “so long as the agency abides by the terms of service.” Hootsuite’s acceptable rules of use dictate that their technology may not be used “for law enforcement, surveillance, tracking, etc.”
ICE is now the single “highest-funded US law enforcement agency,” with a budget of $116 billion. The Trump administration has stated goals of up to 1 million deportations per year, as ICE agents increasingly arrest and detain immigrants with no criminal record, violate America’s Fourth Amendment, and murder detainees and protesters alike. The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures, requiring law enforcement to obtain warrants based on probable cause.
The Peak reached out to Hootsuite for more information. The company said it had nothing new to add, pointing to a public letter from CEO Irina Novoselsky that reiterates the corporation’s stance on surveillance and tracking.
The Peak also spoke with Prem Sylvester, a researcher and project co-lead at the Digital Democracies Institute, for more information on Hootsuite’s statements. The SFU institute brings researchers with backgrounds in an array of disciplines together to “create critical and creative responses to our data-filled world.”
Speaking on the difference between surveillance and the delivery of insights via Hootsuite, Sylvester noted, “We think of those two as separate activities, whereas it’s evidently not been the case that the kind of language and the kind of rhetoric that ICE uses on social media posts is separate from how they conceive of this idea of the quote-unquote ‘illegal immigrant’ and how that sort of language and rhetoric is weaponized.
“How ICE figures out the language that is useful for them to use on social media is due to tools like Hootsuite that give them the ability to understand what their audience wants.”
— Prem Sylvester, researcher and project co-lead at the Digital Democracies Institute
Such technology allows the DHS to see “what gets more views, what gets more engagement with their post, and therefore sort of advances that rhetoric, that language, that sort of project of dehumanization,” said Sylvester.
Mike Tan, Hootsuite’s first finance executive, addressed a crowd of about 250 people at a protest last month, according to CBC. “I see all the violence that’s taking place,” he said in reference to ICE, “shame on Hootsuite.”
