WIRED FOIA disclosure reveals CBP employees misused law-enforcement databases to surveil exes, colleagues, and family members for over a decade

WIRED reported on August 13, 2026 that internal records obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests to CBP's Office of Professional Responsibility and DHS's Office of Inspector General document nearly 300 allegations, spanning 2009 through 2022, that Customs and Border Protection employees misused sensitive law-enforcement databases — including TECS, the Enforcement Integrated Database, the Central Index System, SENTRI, Palantir's FALCON/Investigative Case Management platform, and Thomson Reuters CLEAR — for reasons unrelated to their jobs. Of the nearly 300 entries, 138 were referred to CBP management for review, 78 were assigned to Office of Professional Responsibility criminal investigators, and 43 were logged as "Information Only" with no investigation opened; CBP withheld 21 cases entirely, citing an exemption for active law-enforcement proceedings that suggests criminal misconduct.

The disclosed cases include officers using database access to pursue or harass private citizens: a customs officer allegedly pulled data on an airline flight attendant to contact them, another was accused of using trusted-traveler application data to ask people out, and a CBP employee allegedly obtained an ex-husband's leave schedule as part of a harassment campaign. More serious allegations describe employees feeding law-enforcement information to people suspected of criminal activity, including a 2016 case investigating whether a CBP employee gave database information to a drug-trafficking organization and a 2021 case accusing a Border Patrol agent of advising smugglers which lane to use at the border. In most entries, CBP withheld or left blank the case-resolution field, making it impossible to determine how often the allegations were substantiated or whether employees faced discipline.

A CBP spokesperson told WIRED the agency takes misconduct allegations seriously and that both CBP and DHS "thoroughly investigate alleged or potential misconduct, on or off duty," with "appropriate investigatory, corrective, and disciplinary action" taken when warranted, though federal privacy law limits what the agency can disclose about individual cases. The records land as DHS has expanded its surveillance capacity through facial recognition, license-plate readers, mobile-device searches, and commercially purchased location data, giving employees with database access an increasingly wide window into private citizens' lives.