ICE’s Twitter account temporarily deactivated over age change

The Twitter account for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was temporarily deactivated on Thursday over a change in age put in for the account, according to Twitter. 

The content on the account’s page disappeared Thursday afternoon, but it did not appear to be suspended as there was no message indicating so. 

The disappearance of the agency’s account quickly drew online attention, but the account was up and running a few hours later with Twitter confirming the issue was due to a change in ICE’s listed birth date that violated the platform’s policy requiring users to be at least 13 years old. 

“Twitter requires people using the service to be 13 years of age or older. 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,” a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement. 

The spokesperson confirmed the account had been reinstated. 

ICE also tweeted, once the account was back up and running, that the account faced “no hackers” nor “rogue employees.” The issue was rather simply a “technical glitch.” 

“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’s account tweeted.

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

The account’s followers will take about 24 to 48 hours to fully restore, according to Twitter.