Summary:
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The Department of Homeland Security issued subpoenas to tech companies for user information criticizing ICE activities online.
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Google, Meta, and Reddit complied with some requests, sparking concerns about government overreach and civil liberties violations.
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ACLU and FIRE lawsuits challenge the use of administrative subpoenas for targeting individuals critical of federal policies online.
The Department of Homeland Security has been issuing hundreds of administrative subpoenas to Google, Meta, Reddit, and Discord demanding the names, email addresses, phone numbers, and other identifying information of users who have criticized Immigration and Customs Enforcement online, according to four government officials and tech employees with knowledge of the requests.
And the part that should concern everyone is that some of these companies actually complied.
What happened? pic.twitter.com/l6ehkZyeue
— trentula (@_trentula) February 16, 2026
The subpoenas targeted accounts that criticized ICE or reported the locations of ICE agents on platforms including Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Reddit. These are administrative subpoenas — meaning they don’t come from a judge. DHS can sign and send the demands directly to tech companies without court oversight, a power civil liberties advocates say is now being deployed far more aggressively than ever before.
Google, Meta, and Reddit voluntarily complied with some of the requests. In one case, Google fulfilled a subpoena the same day it notified the user.
Among the accounts targeted was Montco Community Watch, a bilingual Facebook and Instagram account that posts alerts about ICE activity in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. After Meta notified the account operators of the subpoena last October, the ACLU filed suit in federal court seeking to block enforcement, and DHS withdrew the subpoena before a judge could rule. Civil liberties lawyers see that withdrawal as tactical, not transformative.
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“The government is taking more liberties than they used to,” said Steve Loney, senior supervising attorney at ACLU Pennsylvania.
FIRE has also filed a lawsuit accusing Attorney General Pam Bondi and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem of coercing platforms into removing ICE-related content. The Electronic Frontier Foundation sent an open letter to major tech companies urging them to insist on court intervention before complying with any DHS subpoena and to give users maximum notice when targeted.
Tom Homan has publicly discussed creating a database of people arrested for interfering with immigration enforcement. In cities like Minneapolis, federal agents have reportedly informed anti-ICE protesters that they were being recorded and identified. And in a particularly alarming case, DHS subpoenaed Google for information about a retired American citizen who sent a critical email to a DHS attorney — and federal agents later showed up at his door.
Administrative subpoenas were previously reserved for serious criminal investigations like child trafficking. The fact that they’re now being deployed to identify people posting about ICE on social media represents a significant escalation — and a direct test of how far the government can go to strip anonymity from Americans who criticize federal policy online.
The ACLU and FIRE lawsuits are pending, with rulings expected by late spring.
