At the request of the U.S. Department of Justice, a Facebook group used by nearly 80,000 people to report sightings of federal immigration agents in the Chicago area has been taken down by the social media giant Meta, Facebook’s parent company.
The group, called “ICE Sighting-Chicagoland,” has been increasingly used over the last five weeks of “Operation Midway Blitz,” President Donald Trump’s intense deportation campaign, to warn neighbors that federal agents are near schools, grocery stores and other community staples so they can take steps to protect themselves.
But the Trump administration has claimed that its agents — nearly all of whom wear face coverings, don’t wear badges and at times drive vehicles without license plates — are “under attack.”
“Today following outreach from the DOJ, Facebook removed a large group page that was being used to dox and target ICE agents in Chicago,” U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement Tuesday.
“The wave of violence against ICE has been driven by online apps and social media campaigns designed to put ICE officers at risk just for doing their jobs,” Bondi said. “The Department of Justice will continue engaging tech companies to eliminate platforms where radicals can incite violence against federal law enforcement.”
The suspension came two days after far-right political activist and Trump ally Laura Loomer posted on X about the group, claiming “ICE tracking apps and ICE tracking accounts are getting people killed.”
“You’d think other Big Tech executives would use this as an opportunity to be in compliance and to support President Trump’s immigration policies, but they aren’t,” Loomer posted. She accused Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg of “leftist subversion of Trump and his policies” and suggested he should be “contacted by the DOJ.”
The Facebook group had about 76,000 members. Its administrator posted screenshots of messages from Meta that said the group was suspended “because it didn’t follow our Community Standards.” The account had not previously been restricted or flagged, the administrator said.
Meta spokesperson Francis Brennan said, “This Group was removed for violating our policies against coordinated harm.”
Brennan pointed to the social media platform’s “Coordinating Harm and Promoting Crime” policy, which bans “outing the undercover status of law enforcement, military, or security personnel if the content contains the agent’s name, their face or badge and any of the following:
“The agent’s law enforcement organization, the agent’s law enforcement operation [or] explicit mentions of their undercover status.”
Meta updated that policy in December 2023 as the presidential campaign got underway. It previously only banned information about undercover law enforcement operations that contained an agent’s full name or other explicit identification, or photos that showed agents’ faces and explicitly mentioned that they were undercover.
Asked to confirm that the Justice Department requested the page be taken down, Brennan declined to comment and directed the Chicago Sun-Times to Bondi’s statement. He also wouldn’t say if Meta planned to go after several other Facebook groups with similar content.
Brennan was a 2020 Trump campaign adviser whom Meta hired in January after Trump’s election to a second term.
The feds have cited a “1,000% increase” in attacks against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, but there have been few examples provided of federal immigration agents being seriously hurt in the Chicago area.
The Department of Homeland Security reported that one ICE officer was “seriously injured” during a traffic stop in suburban Franklin Park that ended with the officer fatally shooting 38-year-old father Silverio Villegas González. But the Sun-Times later obtained body camera footage from local police that showed the officer said his injuries were “nothing major.”
Another immigration agent hurt his leg chasing a protester outside the west suburban Broadview immigration facility.
Loomer, the far-right activist, has also taken credit for prompting Apple and Google to remove two popular ICE-sighting apps — ICEBlock and Red Dot — from their app stores.
“We are incredibly disappointed by Apple’s actions,” ICEBlock said in a statement after the removal. “Capitulating to an authoritarian regime is never the right move. Apple has claimed they received information from law enforcement that ICEBlock served to harm law enforcement officers. This is patently false.
“ICEBlock is no different from crowd sourcing speed traps, which every notable mapping application, including Apple’s own Maps app, implements as part of its core services. This is protected speech under the first amendment of the United States Constitution.”
Red Dot also said claims that its app “harms law enforcement” are “objectively untrue.”
Contributing: Kade Heather
