[Jimmc414]

By this logic, no constitutional right that annoys the executive is ever worth exercising, which makes the right nonexistent. Recording police in public is a settled protected activity in most circuits, it's not really a gray area. It's an example of the government building files on people for doing something courts have explicitly said they may do.

Whether the protestor's politics make her a political enemy of the administration's voting base is irrelevant. The government tracking citizens because their lawful speech opposes the administration is the textbook definition of retaliation based on viewpoint, the thing the First Amendment firmly prohibits.

The story is that ICE apparently denied maintaining a database whose existence a letter to Congress suggests is real, not that the protester is surprised that activism has consequences.