Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has conducted unlawful investigations into dozens of individuals who have documented ICE activities in their communities, social media users who criticized the government, and international students who attended a protest.
A favored tool in these speech chilling investigations are administrative subpoenas sent to technology companies, requesting basic subscriber data about their users. For example, from 2018 to 2020, ICE sent nearly 500 administrative subpoenas to Meta, Google, and Twitter (now X), according to documents obtained by
Just Futures Law
. In just the second half of 2025, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sent 21 administrative subpoenas to Reddit, according to its
Transparency Report
.
While some subpoenas are routine, ICE has been forced to withdraw others after
users challenged them in court
or
companies pushed back
. These challenged subpoenas exceeded the agency's statutory authority and violated users' First Amendment rights.
Below is a non-comprehensive list of DHS subpoenas that we gathered going back to 2025, looking at public reporting and court cases. This is likely an undercount. The full scope is hard to pin down because these subpoenas typically only come to light when a user is given notice and challenges them in court, or when a company documents them in a transparency report (so far, only Reddit appears to break out specific numbers on DHS subpoenas). In addition, DHS has been slow to respond to our
Freedom of Information Act requests and lawsuits
seeking records that would show how many administrative subpoenas ICE has sent to social media companies since 2025.
If you know of other subpoenas that are not on this list, please reach out to info@eff.org. While the government has abused the subpoena process
in other areas
,
particularly to hospitals
, this list focuses on DHS and ICE subpoenas to technology companies for user data.
DATE ISSUED
(and link to subpoe
… [more]
