No Judge, No Warrant. DHS Is Unmasking Americans Who Oppose ICE on Social Media

The Department of Homeland Security sent hundreds of administrative subpoenas to Google, Meta, Reddit, and Discord in recent months, demanding names, phone numbers, and identifying data for anonymous accounts that criticized ICE or reported agent locations, according to the New York Times on February 14, 2026. These are not court orders. No judge signed them. Administrative subpoenas are issued by DHS itself, a tool historically reserved for child abductions and time-sensitive criminal crises. When the ACLU challenged one targeting a Montgomery County, Pennsylvania community watch page, DHS withdrew it before a judge could rule. It did the same thing when California Instagram accounts sued. That is not coincidence. It’s a strategy to punish people for speaking while avoiding any legal precedent that might stop them. In Russia, Belarus, and Hungary, governments don’t need formal censorship laws to silence critics. They build enough uncertainty that people stop talking. That’s exactly what’s happening here. Google fulfilled at least one subpoena the same day it notified the account holder, leaving no realistic window to challenge it in court. Meta unmasked one user without any prior notice. Users who received Meta’s October 3, 2026 warning had ten days to hire a lawyer and get to federal court or be identified to the federal government. Most Americans cannot do that. The Electronic Frontier Foundation called these demands “lawless.” The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression filed suit against Secretary Noem and Attorney General Bondi in February 2026 for coercing platforms to remove ICE-related content. I’m urging you to immediately co-sponsor legislation requiring judicial approval before any federal agency can subpoena Americans’ social media identities, and to demand Judiciary Committee hearings into DHS’s use of administrative subpoenas to suppress constitutionally protected speech.