Meta Removes ICE-Sightings Group After DOJ Outreach

Meta is the third tech company in two weeks to succumb to DOJ pressure to remove apps and groups used to share information on immigration officer sightings.

Meta, Facebook's parent company, is the latest tech firm the Justice Department (DOJ) has successfully pressured into removing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent-tracking content from its platforms.

On Tuesday, Attorney General Pam Bondi posted on social media that "Facebook removed a large group page that was being used to dox and target [ICE] agents in Chicago" after her agency reached out to the company. Bondi plans to "continue engaging tech companies to eliminate platforms where radicals can incite imminent violence against federal law enforcement." 

The Facebook group, ICE Sighting-Chicagoland, shared information about ICE agent sightings and was growing in popularity since the beginning of "Operation Midway Blitz," the Trump administration's mass deportation campaign currently unfolding in Chicago. The page had reached nearly 80,000 members before being pulled. 

Meta spokesman Francis Brennan told The New York Times that the group was removed for "violating our policies against coordinated harm." The Coordinating Harm and Promoting Crime policy at Meta bans "outing the undercover status of law enforcement, military, or security personnel."

Of course, ICE operations have been no secret, and its agents have hardly been undercover, since President Donald Trump took office. Since January, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has spent at least $51 million on an ad campaign "warning undocumented immigrants to either exit the country or be 'hunted down,'" according to The New Republic. The agency has also supersized the production of social media recruitment campaigns and flashy videos showing arrests.

The move comes just a couple of weeks after the Justice Department asked Apple and Google to remove ICE-tracking apps, like ICEBlock, from their respective app stores for "[putting] ICE agents at risk for doing their jobs," according to Bondi. But while the DHS claims that assaults against ICE officers have risen 1,000 percent, little evidence has been brought forth connecting these assaults to online tracking apps or social media groups. 

Proponents of the apps and groups argue that the technology is protected speech, despite the potential for a user to use the information provided nefariously. "ICEBlock is no different from crowd-sourcing speed traps, which every notable mapping application… implements as part of its core services," ICEBlock creator Joshua Aaron told 404 Media after his app was removed from the Apple Store. "This is protected speech…we are determined to fight this with everything we have." 

But private companies like Apple, Google, and Meta aren't limited in the same way as the federal government when it comes to infringing on users' speech. Many companies' user policy agreements regulate far more speech than would be permissible under the First Amendment, in part, because using these platforms is voluntary. There is even a chance these ICE-tracking apps and groups would've been taken down for violating certain policies without any prompting from the Justice Department. Regardless, it is very concerning that tech companies are being pressured to conform to the Justice Department's wishes—rather than those of their consumers, who have broken no law. 

Unfortunately, Facebook users have seen this before. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Biden administration pressured companies to censor content that questioned the pandemic's origins, something Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says he regrets succumbing to. "I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it," Zuckerberg wrote in an August 2024 statement. "I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any administration in either direction—and we're ready to push back if something like this happens again." 

In the wake of Tuesday's events, it seems clear that Zuckerberg isn't actually ready to push back against the federal government's pressure.