ICE’s Beanie Hunt: How a Green REI Cap Turned Into a Federal Subpoena

If you bought a dark‑green beanie from REI sometime after 2024, you might suddenly find yourself on a government list. In March, agents from Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) served the outdoor‑gear retailer with a subpoena demanding the names, addresses and purchase dates of anyone in the Minneapolis‑St. Paul metro area who bought that specific beanie over the past two years.

The request is part of a massive legal push against 39 people the federal government says took part in a protest outside a Minnesota church in March. The church’s pastor also doubles as an acting ICE field office director, which, unsurprisingly, got the attention of DHS. Alongside the REI subpoena, HSI sent out 91 other summonses to airlines, telecom firms, car‑rental agencies, even a state employment office, all in an effort to map out the protesters’ lives.

What makes this case odd is the sheer narrowness of the target: a single style of beanie sold at REI. The Department of Homeland Security has not explained why that particular item was singled out, especially since the same hat is sold on other platforms. A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota declined to comment.

These subpoenas are technically “1509 customs summonses,” a tool that originally exists to gather data about imports and exports. Since the Trump era, though, journalists have chronicled a pattern of the agency repurposing the form to pry into the personal data of critics, often without a judge’s sign‑off.

Senator Ron Wyden (D‑OR) called the move “flat‑out absurd,” noting that customs summonses are meant for customs‑related compliance, not for fishing expeditions into the political views of Minnesotans. He and Representative Pramila Jayapal have written to Congress warning that companies are being pressured to comply out of fear of regulatory retaliation.

Companies have reacted in different ways. T‑Mobile, for example, supplied six months of call‑and‑text logs for a journalist named Georgia Fort after receiving a summons, even though the journalist never learned about it. Google pushed back on a request for Fort’s YouTube analytics and reportedly narrowed the scope. Reddit disclosed that it received eleven DHS subpoenas in late 2025 for accounts that posted anti‑ICE content; after a First Amendment challenge, those demands were withdrawn.

Meta also reportedly resisted a customs summons, according to internal DHS documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “DHS can’t be trusted as the steward of this law,” says EFF senior staff attorney Mario Trujillo, who has been tracking these kinds of requests.

At the moment, nobody knows exactly how many REI customers were caught up in the beanie subpoena, or whether the retailer complied. What’s clear, however, is that a simple piece of outdoor apparel has become a flashpoint in a larger debate over privacy, government overreach and the tools agencies use to chase dissent.