• by Wendy Davis , Yesterday

A federal judge will prohibit the Trump administration from coercing Apple and Meta into removing an app and Facebook group that enabled people to report activity by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

In a ruling issued late Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Jorge Alonso in the Northern District of Illinois said that Kreisau Group, which created the app EyesUp, and Kassandra Rosado, who created the Facebook group “ICE Sightings -- Chicagoland," were likely to prevail with their claims that administration officials violated the First Amendment by coercing Apple and Facebook into taking down the tools.

Former Attorney General Pamela Bondi and former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem "reached out to Facebook and Apple and demanded, rather than requested, that Facebook and Apple censor Plaintiff’s speech," Alonso wrote in his eight-page opinion and order.

The ruling came in a court battle that began in February, when the Kreisau Group and Rosado, represented by advocacy organization Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, alleged that Bondi and Noem unconstitutionally coerced the tech companies into removing the tools. (The suit currently names Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin as defendants.)

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

For instance, Noem said last year 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 let people report sightings of immigration 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.

Less than two weeks later, Meta removed the group created by Rosado, a jewelry seller in Chicago. (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 argued that the allegations in the complaint, even if proven true, wouldn't show that the apps were taken down due to coercion, as opposed to the tech companies' independent content moderation decisions.

Rosado and Kreisau countered that both Facebook and Apple knew of the apps and allowed them to remain on the platforms until the government pressed for removals.

Alonso plans to issue a written version of the injunction by April 22.