DHS Is Spying on Its Critics Without a Warrant. Pass a Law to Stop It

The Department of Homeland Security has been issuing administrative subpoenas to Google, Meta, and other tech companies to identify Americans who criticize its policies. Unlike a warrant, no judge signs off on it. A mid-level DHS official can issue one in minutes. A 67-year-old Philadelphia retiree sent a single email to a DHS attorney asking for mercy for an asylum seeker. DHS subpoenaed his Google account and sent investigators to his home. Google received 28,622 of these demands in the first six months of Trump’s second term, a 15 percent jump over the prior period. DHS has used them to unmask anonymous accounts that tracked ICE raids in Pennsylvania and Los Angeles. Both cases collapsed only after the ACLU sued. Federal law has never given any agency the authority to investigate someone solely for constitutionally protected speech. What DHS is doing stretches administrative subpoena power far beyond its legal purpose, which has historically been limited to serious crimes like child trafficking. Twenty-eight members of Congress have written to Apple, Google, Meta, and others demanding answers, but letters aren’t enough. I’m asking you to introduce legislation requiring judicial approval before any federal agency can subpoena personal data from a tech company, and to demand a full public accounting of every DHS administrative subpoena issued since January 2025. The legal guardrails exist for a reason. Start enforcing them.