Facebook removes ICE-tracking page after US government ‘outreach’

Meta has removed a Facebook leafage dedicated to tracking Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) enactment successful Chicago aft the Justice Department got involved. 

Attorney General Pam Bondi wrote connected X Tuesday that Facebook had taken down an unnamed “large radical leafage that was being utilized to dox and target” ICE agents aft outreach from the DOJ. Meta spokesperson Andy Stone confirmed the group, which helium did not identify, “was removed for violating our policies against coordinated harm.” Its removal follows Apple and Google blocking ICE-tracking apps, besides pursuing authorities demands.

The DOJ declined to remark beyond Bondi’s post, and ICE did not instantly respond to a petition for remark astir whether circumstantial credible threats were made to ICE agents connected the page. The DOJ appears to person taken enactment aft Laura Loomer, a right-wing influencer who has led respective campaigns against national workers she deems disloyal to Trump, posted astir a Facebook group called “ICE Sighting- Chicagoland” that she claimed “is providing determination updates connected ICE raids and ICE cause locations successful the Chicago area.” While neither the DOJ nor Meta confirmed the sanction of the radical taken down, Loomer claimed a DOJ root told her the bureau had seen her station and contacted Meta astir specified pages. 

As President Donald Trump has ramped up migration enforcement crossed the country, including done much assertive tactics similar workplace raids, respective tools and assemblage groups person popped up to alert radical to ICE’s beingness successful their area. The ICEBlock app utilized to anonymously study ICE sightings rose to the apical of Apple’s app store this summertime earlier it was similarly removed by Apple aft the DOJ reached out, with Bondi claiming it was “designed to enactment ICE agents astatine hazard conscionable for doing their jobs.” ICEBlock developer Joshua Aaron told Fox News Digital it was “patently false” that the app “served to harm instrumentality enforcement officers.”

As backstage assemblage businesses, Apple and Meta tin mostly legally region groups oregon apps arsenic they spot fit. But Bondi’s connection raises questions astir whether the authorities engaged successful amerciable jawboning, oregon pressuring backstage actors to instrumentality down ineligible speech. It’s not wide precisely what the DOJ said to platforms that prompted them to instrumentality action, oregon whether Meta mightiness person removed the leafage adjacent without authorities intervention. But the medication has recently suggested that a wide scope of speech mightiness represent actionable enactment for home coercion and pledged to ace down connected it. 

The incidental is peculiarly notable since President Donald Trump and different Republicans person repeatedly characterized the Biden administration’s outreach to tech platforms implicit covid and voting misinformation arsenic censorship, slamming the government’s role successful flagging posts they labeled harmful to voting engagement oregon nationalist health. Conservative authorities AGs sued the medication successful a lawsuit that went each the mode to the Supreme Court, which did not find a “concrete link” betwixt the platforms’ removal decisions and the government’s connection with the tech executives. 

There’s besides small nonstop grounds that ICE-tracking tools person led to violence. The medication amped up unit aft claiming that a shooter astatine a Dallas tract bureau successful September utilized tracking apps, but it’s unclear what, if any, relation they played successful the onslaught (which led to the deaths of two detainees and nary ICE officers). ICE agents person experienced much assaults arsenic their beingness successful American communities has increased, but to a acold little grade than the authorities has claimed, a caller National Public Radio study found.