Free Speech Group That Fought Biden Tech Censorship Accuses Trump of Doing the Same to Anti-ICE Activists in New Lawsuit

Conservatives spent several years crusading against the ability of government agencies to pressure tech companies into censoring online speech. Now, a prominent free-speech group that fought against Biden administration censorship is accusing the Trump administration of employing the same tactics.

A new lawsuit accuses Attorney General Pam Bondi and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem of strong-arming tech companies into censoring an app and a Facebook group each built to share footage of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a non-partisan legal group specializing in First Amendment cases, filed the lawsuit on behalf of two plaintiffs last week in Illinois federal court. FIRE is representing Facebook group creator Kae Rosado and the company Kreisau Group, which created the video storage app Eyes Up. The app has been used to share videos of federal agents engaged in operations but, crucially, cannot be used to track agents in real time, according to the company.

“Wielding the power of federal criminal law, they coerced Facebook to disable Rosado’s Facebook group and coerced Apple to remove Kreisau Group’s Eyes Up app from its App Store. That’s unconstitutional. The First Amendment prohibits the government from coercing companies to censor protected speech,” FIRE’s lawsuit asserts.

The lawsuit cites several sources suggesting Bondi and Noem pressured Apple and Facebook to censor their plaintiffs. Most notably, it cites an October statement from Bondi taking credit for Apple removing a separate ICE app in a Fox News story about the matter. Apple told the outlet it removed several ICE apps for safety reasons. Eyes Up was one of the other apps Apple removed, even though Apple approved its placement on the App Store in August.

Apple told Eyes Up that it was removed from the App Store after the federal government shared information indicating that the app had violated its internal guidelines. Apple said the information showed “its purpose is to provide location information about law enforcement officers that can be used to harm such officers individually or as a group,” meaning it violated Apple’s guidelines for defamatory, discriminatory, and mean-spirited content.

When the Kreisau Group applied for inclusion in the App Store, Apple independently reviewed Eyes Up and found that it was in compliance with all relevant guidelines, including those Apple would later accuse it of violating. The Eyes Up website existed before the app’s placement, giving Apple the ability to see how it worked and what the videos were used for.

Eyes Up, the video sharing app, does not track real-time movements of ICE agents, FIRE’s lawsuit claims. Instead, videos are reviewed before they can be published on the app, resulting in a delay that prevents real-time tracking of the sort activists have used to coordinate interference with agents.

Eyes Up’s community guidelines prohibit users from engaging in hate, doxxing, threats, harassment, and other behaviors that go beyond its stated goal of documenting public events. Its manual moderating process allows the app to actively enforce its standards and ensure users do not engage in real-time uploads or live tracking, the Kreisau Group told NR.

The Kreisau Group applied for Eyes Up’s reinstatement onto the App Store and attempted to show Apple that its app does not allow for real-time tracking of ICE agents. Apple rejected the application for Eyes Up to return to the App Store.

Trump administration officials began targeting ICE tracking apps last summer because leftist rioters and activists were using them to cause unrest and target agents. ICE-tracking apps gained further attention in September when a gunman in Dallas, Texas, used them to prepare for a targeted attack on an ICE facility. The gunman shot an unmarked transportation vehicle at an ICE facility, killing a detainee and injuring another.

In October, Bondi praised tech companies for their collaboration with federal law enforcement to prevent the apps from being used to injure agents, as NR previously reported.

FIRE’s lawsuit also provides details on Rosado’s decision to create a Facebook group in response to increased ICE enforcement in her native Chicago. An American of Mexican descent, Rosado noticed growing fear in her community and created a Facebook group shortly after Trump assumed office to track local ICE sightings.

Rosado’s group was small until September 2025, when the Trump administration announced a targeted surge of enforcement in Chicago. The increase of ICE resources led to controversies over violent encounters and allegations that ICE was detaining legal immigrants and U.S. citizens. Eventually, her group grew to nearly 100,000 members and thousands of posts were shared each day.

As the group became larger and more prominent, Rosado and a team of volunteers began moderating content to ensure compliance with Facebook guidelines and rules she created to prevent bullying. She and her moderators encouraged group members not to post threatening content or content that promoted violence and illegal activity, the lawsuit says. Out of thousands of posts and comments, Facebook’s moderators only removed five of them for content violations. The violators were individual participants and Facebook told Rosado they would not lead to penalties for the entire group.

On October 14, days after right-wing activist Laura Loomer flagged the Facebook group’s activities, Bondi issued a statement taking credit for Facebook’s decision to take it down.

“Today following outreach from @thejusticedept, Facebook removed a large group page that was being used to dox and target @ICEgov agents in Chicago,” Bondi posted on social media.

“The wave of violence against ICE has been driven by online apps and social media campaigns designed to put ICE officers at risk just for doing their jobs. The Department of Justice will continue engaging tech companies to eliminate platforms where radicals can incite imminent violence against federal law enforcement.”

FIRE’s lawsuit also cites a social media post from Noem praising the Department of Justice for the group’s removal. The post appears to have been deleted. Beyond that, FIRE’s lawsuit mentions months of public threats from the administration to prosecute purveyors of anti-ICE content.

“ICE activities are causing fear in the small business community, and we needed a place to share information in real time. By censoring our group, the government continues to erode our trust. They silenced not only my voice, but the voices of nearly 100,000 other community members,” Rosado said in a statement.

NR has reached out to the DOJ for comment. When reached for comment, DHS disputed FIRE’s claims and cited data on the surge of assaults, attacks, and death threats toward federal agents.

“ICE tracking apps put the lives of the men and women of law enforcement in danger as they go after terrorists, vicious gangs and violent criminal rings,” said DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin.

“Our law officers are facing a 1,300 percent increase in assaults, a 3,200 percent increase in vehicle attacks, and an 8,000 percent increase in death threats. Further, these apps are a method to interfere with law enforcement activities and harbor illegal aliens, both of which are also separately illegal. But, of course, FIRE spins this correct decision for Apple to remove these apps as them caving to pressure instead of helping prevent further harm to federal officers.”

During the Biden era, conservatives and Republicans engaged in congressional investigations, lawsuits, journalistic exposés, and other campaigns in order to prevent government agencies from coordinating with tech companies to censor speech. Online suppression of the lab-leak theory of Covid-19 origins and the Hunter Biden laptop story were two frequently cited examples in which the Biden administration pressured Big Tech companies to suppress or remove disfavored speech from widely used platforms. FIRE was regularly involved in litigation and public advocacy to prevent agencies for coordinating with platforms, whether it be directly or through affiliated nonprofits.

After purchasing Twitter in 2022, Elon Musk shared a trove of internal company documents with several prominent journalists. The resulting stories, known as the “Twitter Files,” revealed that the company had suppressed information about Biden family corruption contained on Hunter Biden’s laptop after receiving warnings from the FBI that the stories might be foreign disinformation.

The congressional investigations led by House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan (R., Ohio) caused Meta and YouTube to apologize for suppressing information at the behest of the Biden administration and implement platform changes meant to prevent similar situations.

High-profile litigation on the issue made it all the way to the Supreme Court in Murthy v. Missouri, a case that focused on censorship related to Covid-19 opinions that ran contrary to federal guidance. In 2024 the Supreme Court tossed the litigation after determining the plaintiffs lacked standing. Nonetheless, discovery during the case illuminated the efforts by Biden administration officials to suppress certain viewpoints on Facebook and elsewhere. Oftentimes, the censorship plots were convoluted because they featured extensive private correspondence between all sides and numerous agencies and nonprofits. Unlike those cases, Bondi and Noem publicly admitted to having tech platforms suppress certain activities they deemed threatening to ICE agents.

“This is a much more straightforward case,” FIRE attorney Colin McDonell told National Review. “They each have one app or group that was censored. It was censored on a particular platform after identifiable government departments reached out to that platform about their speech,” he added.

FIRE is seeking a ruling declaring Noem and Bondi’s alleged coercion to be unconstitutional under the First Amendment. McDonell said its choice to bring the lawsuit was unrelated to ICE agents killing two protesters in Minneapolis, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, in January.

Citizen footage played a significant role in shaping public perceptions about the Good and Pretti shootings, especially in the latter case, where the Trump administration’s assertions directly contradicted video evidence. More broadly, body camera footage has become an important part of dictating viewpoints about controversial encounters between law enforcement and civilians.

“The overarching point is that we should be able to share that information, see those videos and make up our own mind, rather than have the government tell us, these are the videos we want you to see,” McDonell said.

“Obviously the government is going to choose the information that shapes the narrative that it wants. And that just doesn’t work in a free society, in a democracy like ours.”