Overview
- An HSI office inadvertently switched internet providers in April 2025, which assigned the unit a new internet address and broke lawful interception connections for months.
- DHS’s reported wiretaps fell by more than 80 percent after the outage, with the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts showing 23 DHS wiretaps in 2025 versus 133 in 2024.
- A government procurement document disclosed by PunchUp and reported by The Daily Beast and other outlets explicitly acknowledged months of downtime and warned of severe harm to ongoing investigations.
- Former HSI agent Eric Balliet called the failure “catastrophic” and warned criminal networks would benefit, while former prosecutor Brandi Young said high-value cases could stall or collapse and that recovery could take years.
- HSI’s interception systems support FBI and DEA probes, officials have not released a remediation timeline, and coverage so far lists no public disciplinary actions or concrete details on which cases were affected.