This ICE tracker app which claims DHS and DOJ violated its First Amendment rights get judge's support

A US federal judge has supported two banned ICE tracking portals. According to a report by The Verge, Judge Jorge L Alonso of the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois has granted preliminary relief to the creators of an ICE-tracking app and a related Facebook group, backing their claim that government actions may have violated their First Amendment rights . The judge ruled that the plaintiffs, Kassandra Rosado and Kreisau Group, are likely to succeed in their case against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Justice (DOJ).

The ruling comes as the lawsuit alleges that officials from the Trump administration pressured platforms such as Apple and Facebook to remove tools that tracked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity using publicly available information. The ruling also temporarily blocks the government from coercing platforms to take down the Eyes Up app and the “ICE Sightings - Chicagoland” Facebook group.

Both these portals were removed following pressure from officials, along with similar apps such as ICEBlock and Red Dot. The complaint references social media posts by former US Attorney General Pam Bondi and former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem , which called for the removal of such tools. In his filing, Alonso described these posts as “thinly veiled threats.”




What did the US judge say while blocking the ban on these ICE portals




Judge Alonso referenced a unanimous Supreme Court ruling from a 2024 case involving the NRA and Maria Vullo, the former superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services. In that decision, the court stated that “[g]overnment officials cannot attempt to coerce private parties in order to punish or suppress views that the government disfavors,” after Vullo pressured companies to cut ties with the NRA. Building on that precedent, Alonso wrote, “Here, [Pam] Bondi and [Kristi] Noem did exactly that. They reached out to Facebook and Apple and demanded, rather than requested, that Facebook and Apple censor Plaintiff’s speech.”

In relation to the ICE Sightings Facebook group, Attorney General Pam Bondi posted on X that an unnamed group “being used to dox and target” ICE agents had been taken down after the DOJ contacted Meta.


The government will probably file an appeal; therefore, the legal proceedings will continue, the report adds. On the other hand, the Supreme Court's unanimous 2024 decision shows that the Trump administration may also face problems related to this.