• by Wendy Davis , Yesterday

The creators of an app and Facebook group that enable people to report activity by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are pressing a federal judge to prohibit the Trump administration from "continuing to coerce" Apple and Meta into removing the tools.

Administration officials "demanded that Apple and Facebook censor speech -- after repeatedly threatening criminal consequences for anyone associated with online tools reporting ICE activity -- and then boasted the platforms had complied," attorneys for Kreisau Group, which created the app EyesUp, and Kasandra Rosado, who created the Facebook group “ICE Sightings -- Chicagoland," write in papers filed this week with U.S. District Court Judge Jorge Alonso in the Northern District of Illinois.

"Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on this unrebutted record," they add.

The new papers come in a court battle that began in February, when Rosado and Kreisau Group sued former Attorney General Pamela Bondi and former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for allegedly coercing Meta and Apple into taking down the reporting tools. (The suit currently names Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin as defendants.)

Rosado and Kreisau Group claimed that Bondi and Noem violated the First Amendment by effectively compelling the tech companies to remove lawful speech, and sought an injunction prohibiting the government from continuing to do so.

The complaint cited statements by the officials that, according to the plaintiffs, amounted to threats over lawful speech.

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."

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

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. (Rosado subsequently created a new group,“ICE Sightings -- Chicagoland 2,” which has around 50,000 members.)

The same day Meta took down Rosado's original group, Bondi tweeted, "Today following outreach from @thejusticedept, Facebook removed a large group page that was being used to dox and target @ICEgov agents in Chicago. ...The Department of Justice will continue engaging tech companies to eliminate platforms where radicals can incite imminent violence against federal law enforcement."

Noem posted a similar sentiment: "Today, thanks to @POTUS Trump's @TheJusticeDept under the leadership of @AGPamBondi, Facebook removed a large page being used to dox and threaten our ICE agents in Chicago."

The Department of Justice opposes the request for an injunction, arguing in papers filed last month that the allegations in the complaint, even if proven true, wouldn't show that the apps were taken down due to coercion.

The government wrote that Rosado and Kreisau Group "cannot establish that Facebook or Apple did not remove their content based on independent motivations to moderate content and enforce pre-existing policies."

The Justice Department also argued that the October 14 tweets by Noem and Bondi weren't threats because they were published after the tools had been removed.

Rosado and Kreisau counter: "Well, of course they were published after the removal -- statements describing past events (here the governments’ demands and Facebook’s compliance) necessarily occur after those events."

They also argue that Facebook and Apple knew of the apps and allowed them to remain on the platforms until the government "demanded" removals.

The tech companies were "aware of the Eyes Up app and the Chicagoland group and never said they violated the platforms’ respective policies -- not until the government stepped in," the creators argue.

Alonso hasn't yet indicated when he will rule.