• by Wendy Davis , February 11, 2026

A free speech advocacy group is suing the Trump administration for allegedly coercing Apple and Meta Platforms to remove an app and a Facebook group that allowed people to post information about Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity.

"Attorney General Pamela Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem want to control what the public can see, hear, or say about ICE operations," lawyers with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression allege in a complaint filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, on behalf of Illinois resident Kassandra Rosado, who created the Facebook group “ICE Sightings -- Chicagoland,” and Kreisau Group, which created the Eyes Up app.

"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," the complaint continues.

Eyes Up allowed people to post videos about ICE activity, and the Facebook group enabled users to share information about ICE operations in the Chicago area.

The complaint claims that administration officials violated the First Amendment rights of Rosado and the Kreisau Group -- as well as users of the app and Facebook group -- by allegedly coercing the tech companies to oust the ICE reporting tools.

"The First Amendment prohibits the government from coercing companies to censor protected speech," the complaint states. "Without this court's intervention, this unconstitutional coercion will continue."

The complaint cites various statements by Bondi and Noem that, according to the advocacy group, amount to threats over lawful speech relating to ICE activity.

For instance, Noem said in July that the Department of Homeland Security was working with the Justice Department to determine whether CNN could be prosecuted for reporting on a different app -- ICEBlock -- that enabled people to report sightings of immigrations officers.

At around the same time, Bondi said on Fox News that she was eyeing the developer of ICEBlock and that he “better watch out."

"Bondi and Noem are not suppressing laudatory speech about ICE's operations," the complaint asserts. "Bondi and Noem only target such speech ... that shares information about ICE operations in ways that are critical of those operations or that defendants perceive as such."

Apple removed ICEBlock from the app store on October 2, and took down Eyes Up the following day.

Apple allegedly told Kreisau Group that Eyes Up was removed because "law enforcement" said the app's purpose "is to provide location information about law enforcement officers that can be used to harm such officers individually or as a group."

Kreisau Group alleges that it unsuccessfully asked Apple to reinstate the app, arguing that it doesn't allow people to track ICE officers locations in real time.

The complaint elaborates that Eyes Up's moderators manually review the videos before they're publicly posted, so "any ICE officers would be long gone by the time a video is posted."

ICEBlock developer Joshua Aaron is separately suing the administration over that app's removal, arguing that Bondi coerced Apple. The same day Apple expelled the app, Bondi told Fox News, "We reached out to Apple today demanding they remove the ICEBlock app from their App Store -- and Apple did so."

On October 14, Meta removed the group created by Rosado, a jewelry seller in Chicago. The group, which she created in January 2025, had around 76,000 members when it was disabled, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Bondi took credit for the Facebook group's removal, posting on X: “Today following outreach from @thejusticedept, Facebook removed a large group page that was being used to dox and target @ICEgov agents in Chicago."

Meta allegedly told Rosado the group was taken down because it violated Facebook's community standards "multiple times."

But Facebook moderators had removed only five posts on the group during its existence -- and none of those posts were created by Rosado or her own moderators -- according to the complaint.

Rosado subsequently created a new group,“ICE Sightings -- Chicagoland 2,” which now has 50,000 members, according to the complaint.

The advocacy group is seeking a judicial declaration that the administration violated the First Amendment by allegedly coercing Facebook and Apple, and an injunction prohibiting administration officials from continuing to coerce the companies to suppress the ICE sighting group and app.

The lawsuit comes several days after Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) demanded answers from the Department of Justice about what he called a "coercion and censorship campaign" that led Apple and Google to remove ICE-reporting apps.