It did not begin with handcuffs or flashing lights. It began with a phone held up in a car park.
Elinor Hilton says she was standing outside a Home Depot in Portland, Maine, filming federal immigration agents during what appeared to be an enforcement action. She was not shouting. She was not blocking anyone. She was recording.
According to a federal lawsuit now filed in Maine, that was enough to draw attention.
Hilton says an ICE officer approached her holding pepper spray and told her she was being added to a 'domestic terrorist watch list.' The words, she claims, were delivered as a warning. She recalls feeling less like a bystander and more like someone being catalogued.
Hilton and another Maine resident, Colleen Fagan, are now suing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Their complaint alleges that agents used surveillance tactics, including facial recognition technology, to identify and track people who were observing federal operations in public.
The lawsuit, first reported by thePress Herald, states that agents recorded licence plates, scanned faces using a mobile application and suggested arrest could follow if filming continued.
Neither woman was the target of an enforcement action. Both maintain they were exercising what they see as a basic constitutional right: to document government officials carrying out public duties.
Fagan's account stems from a separate incident. In the video she recorded, an ICE agent can be heard referencing what he described as a 'nice little database' in which she was allegedly entered.
That phrase now anchors the lawsuit.
The women argue that the suggestion they were being catalogued or tracked for filming federal agents raises serious First Amendment concerns. Their legal team says citizens have a right to observe law enforcement in public spaces, provided they do not obstruct or interfere.
Source: International Business Times UK
