Immigration and Customs Enforcement detains a migrant in downtown San Antonio earlier this month. Credit: Michael Karlis

The moderators of the r/sanantonio Reddit page are facing a backlash after revealing Tuesday that they will no longer allow any posts alerting users of the forum about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in the city.

Instead, all posts regarding San Antonio ICE raids, which have ramped up in recent weeks, will now require “substantial evidence” and “specific details about the situation” before being posted on the page, which has more than a quarter of a million users.

The moderators didn’t provide specific details about what standards Reddit users are now expected to meet before their ICE-related posts will be accepted.

“Continual posts without anything to back them up don’t help anybody,” the r/sanantonio moderation team wrote. “They only serve to foment panic and possibly make things dangerous.”

Moderators said they’re implementing similar guidelines to those used by community Reddit pages in Bloomington, Indiana, and Asheville, North Carolina.

Reddit users were quick to push back at the new requirements, however.

“Choosing to follow the same policies of cities which are not close to the border and with a smaller Hispanic/Latino population isn’t a good move,” user @Henry_Thee_Fifth wrote. “You need to tailor it to a large city within a couple of hours from Mexico rather than eastern seaboard northern states. ICE raids are going to be more frequent here. Either stop gatekeeping how information is disseminated or make a daily master post for people to post ICE activity within a 24-hour period.”

Indeed, other cities with large Latino populations, including Los Angeles and New Orleans, have entire threads dedicated to monitoring ICE movements which appear to receive little moderator oversight.

“Let’s say that 1 out of 4 posts are genuine information about actual ICE/DHS/CBP presence,” Reddit user Hedgehog_Capable wrote. “If going to a particular place gave me a 1 in 4 chance of NEVER SEEING MY FAMILY AGAIN, I think I would prefer getting 3 false alarms and one genuine.”

Meanwhile, Reddit user @hoping_2help_karma wrote that they often see validated reports of San Antonio ICE operations on Reddit before they appear on the news or other social media platforms.

Indeed, several area ICE raids that first appeared on Reddit were later verified by local news outlets — among them an operation at The Pearl last week.

Despite the new guidelines, the moderators of r/sanantonio maintained in their post that the don’t support ICE’s operations in the Alamo City.

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This article appears in Jun 12-25, 2025.

Michael Karlis is a multimedia journalist at the San Antonio Current, whose coverage in print and on social media focuses on local and state politics. He is a graduate of American University in Washington,...