ICE just separated itself from its own Twitter account.
The United States’ preeminent child-separation agency was briefly silenced Thursday, when for a short while the Twitter account belonging to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency appeared to be deleted. The reason, implied a Twitter spokesperson, is that someone with access to the account changed its “age” to under 13.
“Twitter requires people using the service to be 13 years of age or older,” a Twitter spokesperson explained over email when Mashable asked what happened to the ICE account. “If an account’s birthdate is changed to a day/month/year prior to that and our systems identify content posted by the account before they were 13 years old, they will be locked out of the account.”
ICE was briefly unable to tweet today. Oh, the humanity.
Image: screenshot / twitter
Unfortunately, ICE resolved the issue mid-day Thursday and started tweeting again.
“No hackers, no rogue employees,” wrote the agency. “We had a technical glitch and we appreciate the Twitter team’s help in bringing us back online.”
We’re back! No hackers, no rogue employees. We had a technical glitch and we appreciate the Twitter team’s help in bringing us back online. Stay tuned here for more great news about the work that the men and women of ICE do every day to protect the homeland.
— ICE (@ICEgov) November 12, 2020
At the time of this writing, ICE’s account has only 800 followers — though a Twitter spokesperson confirmed that the rest of the followers will be back within 48 hours.
A few too many.
Image: screenshot / twitter
ICE is fortunate that it’s Twitter, and not ICE itself, that’s responsible for reuniting it with its separated followers.
On Nov. 9, ABC News reported that, according to lawyers working to reunite them, U.S. officials cannot locate the parents of 666 children who were separated from their families at the U.S. border.