Meta has removed a Facebook page dedicated to tracking Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) action in Chicago after the Justice Department got involved.
Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote on X Tuesday that Facebook had taken down an unnamed “large group page that was being used to dox and target” ICE agents after outreach from the DOJ. Meta spokesperson Andy Stone confirmed the group, which he did not identify, “was removed for violating our policies against coordinated harm.” Its removal follows Apple and Google blocking ICE-tracking apps, also following government demands.
The DOJ declined to comment beyond Bondi’s post, and ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment about whether specific credible threats were made to ICE agents on the page. The DOJ appears to have taken action after Laura Loomer, a right-wing influencer who has led several campaigns against federal workers she deems disloyal to Trump, posted about a Facebook group called “ICE Sighting- Chicagoland” that she claimed “is providing location updates on ICE raids and ICE agent locations in the Chicago area.” While neither the DOJ nor Meta confirmed the name of the group taken down, Loomer claimed a DOJ source told her the agency had seen her post and contacted Meta about such pages.
As President Donald Trump has ramped up immigration enforcement across the country, including through more aggressive tactics like workplace raids, several tools and community groups have popped up to alert people to ICE’s presence in their area. The ICEBlock app used to anonymously report ICE sightings rose to the top of Apple’s app store this summer before it was similarly removed by Apple after the DOJ reached out, with Bondi claiming it was “designed to put ICE agents at risk just for doing their jobs.” ICEBlock developer Joshua Aaron told Fox News Digital it was “patently false” that the app “served to harm law enforcement officers.”
Bondi’s statement raises questions about whether the government engaged in illegal jawboning
As private sector businesses, Apple and Meta can generally legally remove groups or apps as they see fit. But Bondi’s statement raises questions about whether the government engaged in illegal jawboning, or pressuring private actors to take down legal speech. It’s not clear precisely what the DOJ said to platforms that prompted them to take action, or whether Meta might have removed the page even without government intervention. But the administration has recently suggested that a broad range of speech might constitute actionable support for domestic terrorism and pledged to crack down on it.
The incident is particularly notable since President Donald Trump and other Republicans have repeatedly characterized the Biden administration’s outreach to tech platforms over covid and voting misinformation as censorship, slamming the government’s role in flagging posts they labeled harmful to voting engagement or public health. Conservative state AGs sued the administration in a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court, which did not find a “concrete link” between the platforms’ removal decisions and the government’s communication with the tech executives.
There’s also little direct evidence that ICE-tracking tools have led to violence. The administration amped up pressure after claiming that a shooter at a Dallas field office in September used tracking apps, but it’s unclear what, if any, role they played in the attack (which led to the deaths of two detainees and no ICE officers). ICE agents have experienced more assaults as their presence in American communities has increased, but to a far lower degree than the government has claimed, a recent National Public Radio report found.