ICE Faces Lawsuits Over Unmasking Anonymous Online Critics Without Judicial Approval

Since President Donald Trump retook office in January 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have reportedly increased their use of administrative subpoenas—known as unmasking subpoenas—to demand identifying information from tech companies about anonymous users. These subpoenas, which do not require judicial approval, have historically been reserved for serious crimes like child trafficking. However, companies including Google, Reddit, Discord, and Meta have received hundreds of such requests in recent months, often targeting users who criticized ICE or shared information about its operations—activities protected under the First Amendment.

In response, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Pennsylvania filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in February 2025 for records on these subpoenas. The request aims to investigate whether DHS, through ICE, is attempting to unmask anonymous social media users based on the content of their speech. The FOIA request followed the ACLU’s representation of two Montgomery County residents whose data were sought in unmasking subpoenas last year over First Amendment–protected activity.

The first subpoena targeted an individual running the ICE monitoring Montco Community Watch Instagram and Facebook pages. The second sought the identifying information of a man after Google notified him that DHS requested his data following an email he sent to a government prosecutor. In that email, he urged “common sense and decency” in an immigration case involving an Afghan man facing deportation and potential death by the Taliban if returned. Both subpoenas were dropped after the DHS was challenged in court.

“The government is taking more liberties than they used to,” said Steve Loney, a senior supervising attorney at the ACLU Pennsylvania. “By avoiding a legal order to stop the unmasking subpoenas, the pressure is on the end user, the private individual, to go to court.” It remains unclear how many unconstitutional subpoenas have been issued or complied with, as tech companies are not required to notify users of such requests. “The fact that we only know about a handful of these that are litigated doesn’t mean that there aren’t many others under the radar,” said Ari Shapell, an attorney with ACLU Pennsylvania.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a nonprofit civil liberties organization, also filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia against ICE and DHS after both agencies ignored an additional FOIA request seeking information on unmasking subpoenas.