On April 18, 2026, Judge Jorge L. Alonso of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois ruled that the Trump administration violated the First Amendment when it pressured Facebook and Apple to remove ICE-tracking groups and apps.
The judge cited the unanimous 2024 Supreme Court decision in NRA v. Vullo, which held that government officials “cannot attempt to coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views that the government disfavors.” He found that AG Bondi and DHS Secretary Noem “reached out to Facebook and Apple and demanded, rather than requested, that Facebook and Apple censor Plaintiff's speech.”
Bondi had bragged on X that a group “being used to dox and target” ICE agents had been taken down after DOJ contacted Meta. Noem also took credit publicly. The judge called their social media posts “thinly veiled threats.”
The plaintiffs — Kassandra Rosado (who runs the “ICE Sightings - Chicagoland” Facebook group) and Kreisau Group (developers of the “Eyes Up” app) — are represented by FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression). Similar apps were also removed from app stores following government pressure, and CNN was threatened with prosecution simply for reporting on one of the apps.
The government is expected to appeal.
Update (September 29, 2026): Apple has now said in writing why it pulled ICEBlock, the best-known ICE-tracking app, in October 2025. In a July 22 letter to Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, that had not previously been reported, Apple wrote that “in the wake of the fatal Dallas shooting, the U.S. Department of Justice expressed serious concerns to Apple that ICEBlock posed a threat to the safety of federal officers,” CNN reported. Raskin answered on September 28 that “There appears to be no direct connection between the Dallas incident and the apps you removed,” and that removing apps “at the request of the federal government, raises the distinct possibility that Apple is working with the government to violate its customers' First Amendment rights.” He asked Apple for a full list of apps removed after government requests. ICEBlock's developer, Joshua Aaron, sued in December; the government has moved to dismiss, arguing Apple acted on its own. DHS stood by its claims, telling CNN that officers face “an 8,000% increase in death threats,” a figure it has not released data to support.