An FBI field memo circulating since February warns that a group of left-wing women has been using dating apps to lure federal immigration agents into romantic meetings, then publicly expose and dox them online β a tactic the memo says is designed to humiliate agents and deter immigration enforcement.
The memo, first reported by the outlet Property of the People and subsequently covered by the New Republic and the Guardian, describes profiles that adopt the aesthetic of a “traditional wife” to appeal specifically to people in law enforcement. According to the memo’s language, the goal was to draw officers into an online or in-person encounter under the guise of a date, after which the targets would be publicly identified and harassed online. The document frames the effort as a deliberate attempt to generate public embarrassment and chill immigration enforcement activity.
What the memo describes
The alert is notable for how specific it is about the methods involved. Rather than describing a vague online threat, the memo points to a recognizable persona β the “tradwife” β being deployed as bait. Profiles carrying that imagery also listed interests curated to match the presumed tastes of law-enforcement personnel, the memo says. The endgame, according to the document, was not romance but exposure: a date or online exchange followed by public identification of the agent involved.
Breitbart News, which obtained the memo’s contents along with earlier reporting from the New York Post, noted that the Post had documented the broader phenomenon in January. That reporting described left-leaning TikTok users organizing women to collect photos and messages from ICE agents as part of a doxxing campaign, at a time when attacks on immigration officers were rising.
Women describe the effort on TikTok, per the Post
The New York Post quoted a TikTok user who described participating in exactly the kind of operation the FBI memo warns about. According to the Post, the user said she belonged to a group of roughly 20 women in Massachusetts involved in the effort, and that the group maintained a private Facebook page of around 1,000 people. Some members went on dates, she said, while others handled background checks and information gathering on the back end.
In a separate viral post flagged by the account Libs of TikTok, a TikTok creator asked followers in the Carolinas to screenshot and share the dating-app profiles of suspected ICE agents for a “folder” she said she was assembling on every agent in the state β a list she planned to make public. Another post encouraged users to collect intimate images and photos and distribute them widely.
Skepticism from the press and a former agent
Not everyone treats the memo as credible. Both the New Republic and the Guardian quoted the executive director of Property of the People β the outlet that first surfaced the memo β dismissing it as thinly sourced.
“It’s absurd the FBI issued a thinly-sourced security alert about ICE agents’ online dating troubles,” he said, adding that it was “equally ludicrous” for the bureau to spend taxpayer money protecting agents from possible embarrassment at the hands of a “small group of women” who might name and ridicule them online.
The Guardian also published a quote from a former FBI agent who argued the alert reflects a broader pattern in which right-leaning media generates threats that government intelligence then repeats without scrutiny.
“The right-wing echo chamber creates threats, and the government’s intelligence apparatus just repeats those threats without any context, more detail, or any instruction of how agents or officers should respond,” he said. “They must have run out of other threats.”
The divide here is stark: the FBI’s Chicago division believed the threat merited a formal warning to fellow law enforcement, while critics in the press and among former bureau personnel contend the memo amplifies a politically motivated narrative rather than a genuine security concern.
Also worth noting: the dispute is unfolding against a backdrop of unusually heated rhetoric about ICE officers. Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., drew attention earlier for saying a person would be “justified shooting” ICE agents, and Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., has referred to ICE officers as thugs and domestic terrorists. Those remarks have circulated widely in conservative media as evidence of an environment in which attacks on immigration personnel are treated as acceptable.
The disagreement over what a warning is for
For supporters of the FBI memo, the logic is straightforward: if agents are being targeted for identification and humiliation, the bureau has an obligation to alert the officers at risk. That argument holds even if the operation is small, the reasoning goes β just as a company warns employees about phishing attempts regardless of how many people are actually targeted.
Critics counter that the memo lacks the sourcing and specificity expected of a formal intelligence product, and that elevating it publicizes a fringe effort rather than protecting anyone. They also question whether embarrassment and doxxing, however malicious, rise to the level of a security threat warranting bureau resources.
The memo’s defenders return to the same point: the tactic described is a documented pattern, with participants openly describing their involvement on social media. Whether the participants number twenty or two hundred, the agents being targeted have no way of knowing which date request is genuine β and that uncertainty alone, the argument runs, is a burden the FBI has a duty to flag.
What remains unresolved is whether the warning reflects a real operational risk or an overreaction to online provocation. The memo’s existence is not in dispute; its significance is. And with the underlying conflict over immigration enforcement showing no sign of cooling, the argument over the alert is likely to track the larger political fight rather than settle it.
Source: www.breitbart.com β https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2026/09/18/nolte-fbi-warns-of-pathetic-leftist-women-using-honeytraps-to-humiliate-ice-agents/