Elinor Hilton was afraid when the immigration agents she was filming outside of a Home Depot last month began to approach her, carrying pepper spray.

It’s the moment when one of the agents began recording her, though, that she said she can’t shake.

“He said ‘We’re putting you on a domestic terrorist watch list, and if you keep coming to things like this, we’re going to come to your house later and arrest you,'” Hilton, who lives in Portland, said in a recent interview.

Hilton and Colleen Fagan, a Maine resident whose video of a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent referencing a “nice little database” was shared widely across social media, filed a lawsuit against federal immigration officials on Monday, saying the alleged collection and maintenance of data about people who observe ICE activity violates the First Amendment.

The women were among many who watched and documented activity by ICE agents during the agency’s recent operation in the state.

In video taken by Hilton on Jan. 21, masked men appear to obscure her view of agents placing someone into a white van. That includes an agent moving a car in front of Hilton as she walked closer to the scene.

“Do you have like five friends on Facebook? Nobody wants to see you,” one man said.

Another man held his phone to Hilton’s face. A third agent in the background asks others whether they’ve already taken images of Hilton’s parked car.

In Fagan’s video, taken during a different incident on Jan. 23, a masked man says agents have a “nice little database and now you’re considered a domestic terrorist.”

“I know it is my right to film law enforcement and to film any interaction with ICE,” Fagan said in a written statement about filing the lawsuit. “I will not let myself be threatened or silenced for filming ICE.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement Monday night that there is “NO database of ‘domestic terrorists’” run by the department.

“We do of course monitor and investigate and refer all threats, assaults and obstruction of our officers to the appropriate law enforcement,” the spokesperson wrote in an email. “Obstructing and assaulting law enforcement is a felony and a federal crime. Our law enforcement methods follow the U.S. constitution.”

The department did not respond to questions about Hilton and Fagan’s lawsuit, including statements from agents alleged in their complaint.

DHS previously said more than 200 immigrants were arrested in ICE’s operation in Maine last month. The agency has not responded to requests from reporters and state officials for information about those detained. Several immigrants and their lawyers have said that the people arrested included asylum seekers without criminal histories who were legally allowed to work in the country.

LAWSUIT ALLEGES DATABASE

DHS and its various agencies, including ICE, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other department leaders are named as defendants in the lawsuit, which accuses them of violating the women’s First Amendment rights to observe government agents.

Hilton and Fagan’s complaint states that DHS has been using license plate readers and, since May, a facial recognition app, known as Mobile Fortify, which can identify individuals by accessing roughly 200 million images in the government’s possession. In a statement to the Guardian last month, the department said the app does not violate constitutional or privacy rights.

By January, according to the complaint, DHS had used the app more than 100,000 times, “routinely” for individuals who are “not themselves the targets of enforcement operations.”

Hilton and Fagan are seeking an emergency order from the U.S. District Court of Maine that their data be expunged from any alleged watchlist and that the use of such a database be declared unconstitutional.

They are also seeking class action status to include the dozens of others in Maine who believe their constitutional rights to observe law enforcement officers were violated by immigration officials and that their data has been added to a government database.

DHS officials also denied the existence of any such watchlist in statements to CNN last month, after Fagan’s video of the agent referencing a database gained traction and CNN reported on a memo that directed ICE agents in Minnesota to record “images, license plates, identifications, and general information on hotels, agitators, protestors, etc., so we can capture it all in one consolidated form.”

‘THERE TO BEAR WITNESS’

Hilton said watching and recording arrests and other activity by ICE is a form of protest.

“Part of why I love Portland so much, and part of why I think it was targeted, is that this is a place that has expressed in a number of ways our intention to be welcoming to immigrants,” Hilton said.

Hilton and Fagan are both represented by lawyers from the national nonprofit Protect Democracy. JoAnna Suriani said her clients are requesting class action status so they can represent other observers across the country who have been told by ICE agents that they were being added to a government database.

Concerns about a possible database have come up in several other lawsuits filed around the country that allege excessive use of force by ICE and federal agents in places like Chicago and Minneapolis.

Suriani believes Fagan and Hilton’s lawsuit is one of the first to specifically challenge the reported use of a database by DHS to track those who lawfully observe and record immigration enforcement.

The case is the first civil complaint filed against ICE this year in Maine. Last month, a South Portland man notified DHS that he plans to sue, alleging agents threatened him with arrest for following them and observing them from his car on Jan. 22. He is pursuing legal action under the Federal Tort Claims Act, which requires that the government receive a “notice of claim” six months before a civil complaint can be filed in court.

Hilton and Fagan had been observing federal agents peacefully without any physical encounter, according to the lawsuit. Hilton told a reporter she was respectful and complied when agents at the Home Depot told her to keep her distance. The women claim they were recorded and threatened by agents.

“They were there to bear witness,” Suriani said. “They were there to record, which they have a right to do.”

At the Home Depot, after agents told Hilton she was going onto a government watchlist, she said they called for reinforcement as other observers approached the scene. More agents wearing helmets and carrying PepperBall guns lined up and urged the group of about six observers to move farther back, Hilton said.

Federal officers finished their immigration arrest before observers left the scene, she said.

Hilton said the incident was frightening, especially after seeing how federal agents have used force against protesters and observers in other states. She said those same stories were the reason why she wanted to monitor the arrest until it was over.

“The more they try to keep us from documenting,” she said, “the more I think it’s so important to do it.”

Hilton said she will keep watching as immigration enforcement continues in Maine.