GTFO ICE's website promises members something specific. "Your privacy is our priority. If there is ever a data breach, you will be notified immediately." Seventeen thousand people were not notified. They are finding out through news reports.
Miles Taylor launched GTFO ICE to collect names, emails, phone numbers, and zip codes from activists who wanted to fight the Trump administration's immigration enforcement.
Then he left all 17,662 of them exposed on a public API.
No authentication. No rate limiting. Any person with a browser could download the entire database in minutes.
The man who ran the Department of Homeland Security as Chief of Staff. The man who oversaw election security operations. The man who worked at Google as Head of National Security Policy. Built a sign-up form that a high school student could have broken into.
And when the breach was discovered, GTFO ICE said nothing.
🧵🚨 BREAKING: Miles Taylor: "Anonymous," former DHS Chief of Staff, Google security executive launched a website called GTFO ICE that collects your full name, email, phone number, and zip code to join an anti-ICE "rapid response network." And publishes the user infromation via… pic.twitter.com/zDKVIePntM
— DataRepublican (small r) (@DataRepublican) May 2, 2026
The data was exposed via an open REST endpoint. Names. Emails. Phone numbers. Zip codes. Timestamps. Everything an authoritarian government or a criminal would need to target activists.
Taylor was told about it 12 hours before this story went to press. The API was still live when we published.
GTFO ICE's website promises members something specific. "Your privacy is our priority. If there is ever a data breach, you will be notified immediately."
Seventeen thousand people were not notified. They are finding out through news reports. Through unofficial channels. Because the people running GTFO ICE decided that keeping quiet was better than keeping their word.
The data has been turned over to FBI, HSI, and ICE.
April 2025. Trump suspends Taylor's security clearance. The President calls his conduct treasonous. Taylor had leaked to the New York Times. Taylor had written op eds attacking his own boss. Taylor had built his entire post government career on being a resistance hero.
Then he lost his credentials.
Five months later. Taylor launches DEFIANCE dot org. No IRS registration. Solicits monthly memberships up to a thousand dollars. That is twelve thousand dollars a year. The website calls it a nonprofit. We cannot find evidence it ever registered as one.
Five months after that. GTFO ICE goes live.
The timeline shows the pattern. The clearance suspension killed Taylor's establishment value. Google had hired him. NGOs had funded him. Media outlets had platformed him. All of it was built on his national security credibility.
With the credential gone, Taylor needed a new business model. A new market. A new way to make money off his name.
So he built a movement instead.
GTFO ICE operates as a coalition of three organizations.
DEFIANCE dot org. Miles Taylor and Xander Schultz.
Save America Movement. Steve Schmidt.
Project Salt Box. Unknown principals.
This structure creates distance. No single organization owns anything. They are partners. They are collaborative. They are above board.
The money tells a different story.
The Arabella Advisors network and the Sixteen Thirty Fund have directed at least six hundred twenty five thousand dollars to GTFO ICE coalition principals.
Three hundred thousand to the Lincoln Project. That is Steve Schmidt.
Two hundred fifty thousand to One for Democracy. That is Xander Schultz.
Seventy-five thousand to Defeat by Tweet. That is also Xander Schultz.
This is not grassroots money. This is machine money. This is the organized left's infrastructure funding what GTFO ICE markets to its members as authentic, decentralized, and volunteer-driven.
Gene Goodwin
Steve Schmidt co founded the Lincoln Project. He raised about sixty five million dollars between 2019 and 2021.
Then the press started asking questions.
The money flowed to founders' consulting firms. It was not clear who was doing the actual work. It was not clear what the actual results were. The New York Times reported that Lincoln Project ads rarely aired in competitive races. The Washington Post reported the same thing. The money went somewhere. Nobody could explain where.
AOC called it scam territory.
Co-founder John Weaver faced allegations of soliciting young men. The organization fractured. By 2022, it was toxic.
Schmidt pivoted. He created the Save America Movement. Same structure. Different name. Same people. Same promises about grassroots and bipartisan and fighting for democracy.
Now he is part of GTFO ICE. Running the same playbook.
The playbook works. You create an organization that sounds authentically grassroots. You get dark money flowing in from Arabella adjacent sources. You build a member list. You send urgent appeals about the threat. You promise that members are part of something bigger. You harvest their data. Their email addresses. Their phone numbers. Their locations.
Then you get rich.
Scott Goodstein is GTFO ICE's media contact. He sits on its advisory board.
Goodstein was Barack Obama's 2008 external digital director. He built the digital operation that elected Obama. Then he did Bernie Sanders' digital fundraising in 2016. That campaign raised two hundred eighteen million dollars.
Goodstein knows how to move money. He knows how to build email lists. He knows how to send urgent appeals that convert people into donors.
His presence on the GTFO ICE advisory board is not accidental. It is strategic. It brings fundraising expertise. It brings donor networks. It brings the ability to turn raw data into money.
The "bipartisan grassroots movement" suddenly looks less grassroots when you see that its media operation is being run by a guy who raised a quarter billion for Bernie Sanders.
His advisory board ties connect directly to the Arabella dark money network. These are not loose connections. These are institutional relationships. These are people who work together across multiple organizations. They funnel money through different structures to preserve the appearance of independence.
This is not transparency. This is infrastructure.
Gene GoodwinGTFO ICE's website makes specific promises.
We take your privacy seriously. Your information is secure and encrypted. If there is ever a data breach, you will be notified immediately.
Seventeen thousand six hundred sixty two people signed up. All of them provided their full name. Their email address. Their phone number. Their zip code.
All of that data was exposed on a public API.
None of them were notified.
The organization that promised immediate notification chose to keep quiet. They did not post a security notice. They did not send an email to members. They did not contact regulators. They did not do any of the things that a responsible organization does when it discovers that it has exposed customer data.
They waited for someone else to report it.
When the report came, they had to face the fact that the man they hired to build their infrastructure, the guy with the national security credentials, the guy who had worked at Google and DHS, had built something that looked like it was made by someone who had never heard of basic security practices.
The "bipartisan grassroots movement" is an unknown nonprofit with no IRS registration, run by a former DHS Chief of Staff.
It is a foundation run by the disgraced co founder of the Lincoln Project.
It is an advisory network staffed by professional Democratic digital operatives.
It is funded by at least six hundred twenty five thousand dollars in dark money from the Arabella network.
And its sign up form, built by a guy who ran election security and homeland security operations, exposed seventeen thousand six hundred sixty two people's home addresses and phone numbers on an unencrypted unauthenticated API.
The man who ran homeland security could not secure a sign up form. The man who had access to the nation's most sensitive counterterrorism data left a database of activists' locations exposed online.
The organization that promised to protect its members' privacy kept quiet about the breach.
This is what the resistance looks like in 2025. This is what fighting for democracy means. You take dark money from the Arabella network. You hire professional fundraisers who have raised hundreds of millions. You build an infrastructure that looks grassroots but is actually astroturf all the way down. When you mess up, when you leave your data exposed, you hope nobody notices.
Somebody noticed. DataRepublican and a few of her friends did.
Gene Goodwin