Facebook had reviewed the “ICE Sightings – Chicagoland” group and found five problematic posts out of thousands. Apple had examined and approved the Eyes Up app. Then the federal government called, and both vanished within days.

On Thursday, a federal judge ruled that those removals were unconstitutional — the product of direct government coercion designed to silence lawful speech.

Judge Jorge L. Alonso of the US District Court for the Northern District of Illinois granted a preliminary injunction to plaintiffs Kassandra Rosado, who ran the Facebook group, and Kreisau Group, developers of the Eyes Up app. The order bars the Trump administration from continuing to pressure Facebook and Apple to suppress the plaintiffs’ speech.

How the Silencing Happened

The chain of events began on October 12, 2025, when social media influencer Laura Loomer posted a link to the ICE Sightings group and tagged then-Attorney General Pam Bondi and then-Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. Two days later, the group was gone.

That same day, Bondi posted on X that “[t]oday following outreach from [the DOJ], Facebook removed a large group that was being used to dox and target [ICE] agents in Chicago.” Noem echoed the claim, thanking the DOJ for the removal of “a large page being used to dox and threaten our ICE agents in Chicago.”

Days earlier, Apple had already removed several ICE-related apps. On October 2, Bondi boasted in a statement to Fox News that “we reached out to Apple today demanding they remove the ICEBlock app from their App Store — and Apple did so.” Among the apps pulled was Eyes Up, which Apple claimed violated its prohibition on “mean-spirited” content.

The judge was skeptical. Apple had independently reviewed and approved Eyes Up in August 2025, when the app’s purpose and content were already clear. As for the Facebook group, moderators had found only five problematic posts and comments out of thousands of posts and tens of thousands of comments — hardly grounds for disabling a group under Facebook’s own policies.

The Legal Finding

The ruling rests on a unanimous 2024 Supreme Court decision in NRA v. Vullo, which held that government officials cannot coerce private parties to suppress disfavored views. In that case, New York’s financial regulator pressured companies to cut ties with the NRA.

“Here, Bondi and Noem did exactly that,” Alonso wrote. “They reached out to Facebook and Apple and demanded, rather than requested, that Facebook and Apple censor Plaintiff’s speech.”

The court identified three key pieces of evidence. Both platforms had previously approved the content. Both reversed course immediately after government contact. And both Bondi and Noem publicly took credit for the removals — posts the judge characterized as “thinly veiled threats.”

“Defendants’ actions can be reasonably understood to convey a threat of adverse government action against Facebook and Apple in order to suppress Plaintiffs’ speech,” Alonso concluded. The plaintiffs’ speech “remains suppressed” — the Facebook group is still disabled, and Eyes Up is still unavailable on the App Store.

A Pattern With Broader Reach

The ruling documents a specific instance of coercion, but the pattern extends further. The DOJ publicly threatened prosecution of CNN for reporting on the existence of ICE-tracking apps. Multiple apps — ICEBlock, Red Dot, and others — were removed from app stores following the same pressure campaign.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), which is representing the plaintiffs, said it was “extremely encouraged by this ruling,” adding that the First Amendment protects “the right to discuss, record, and criticize what law enforcement does in public.”

The case originally named Bondi and Noem as defendants. It now proceeds against their successors — Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin. The terms of the preliminary injunction will be set later this month.

The government is likely to appeal, though the unanimous Supreme Court precedent underlying the decision makes that an uphill fight. The core principle is straightforward: the government cannot do through private platforms what it is forbidden from doing directly. A federal judge has now enforced it.

Sources