A Canadian man who hasn’t set foot in the U.S. for over a decade received a jolt on February 9. Google notified him of a summons from the Department of Homeland Security. DHS wanted his location history, activity logs, even records of account suspensions for threatening language. All this because of his X posts condemning federal agents for killing Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis last January.
The man posted passionately. Sometimes off-color. Never threats or incitements to violence, his lawyers say. He aimed to rally despairing Americans. Watching Trump officials smear the victims as terrorists enraged him. ‘People were being asked to disbelieve our own eyes,’ he told Wired.
DHS issued the summons under the Tariff Act of 1930. That’s a customs tool for import probes and duties. Not for tracking foreign social media critics. Records sought spanned September 1, 2025, to February 4, 2026. The man imported nothing from the U.S. in that time. His ACLU lawyer, Michael Perloff, sued DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin. Violation of customs law, they claim. No judge or grand jury reviewed it. Just an administrative subpoena.
Perloff pulls no punches. ‘I don’t know what the government knows about our client’s residence, but it’s clear that the government isn’t stopping to find out.’ Geographic location fuels overreach. ‘It’s using that fact to get information that otherwise would be totally outside of its jurisdiction. We’re talking about the physical movements of a person who lives in Canada.’
Google notified him despite DHS’s indefinite gag request. He thought it a scam at first. Then reality hit. Tech giants face a barrage. The New York Times reported in February that DHS fired off hundreds of such subpoenas to Google, Reddit, Discord, Meta. Targeting accounts criticizing ICE or sharing agent locations. Names, emails, phone numbers requested. Google, Meta, Reddit complied with some.
Administrative subpoenas bypass courts. From 2016 to mid-2022, DHS issued over 170,000. A 2017 DHS inspector general report found policy violations in one of every five. Chris Duncan, ex-Customs and Border Protection counsel, calls it abuse. ‘It says right in the statute, it’s for records and testimony about the correctness of an entry, the liability of a person for duties, taxes, and fees. And that’s all it was ever envisioned to be used for.’
So why stretch it? Broader crackdown on ICE foes. Post-2025 election, Trump ramped up immigration enforcement. Killings like Good and Pretti’s ignited protests. DHS probes online dissent. Reddit fought a subpoena over an ICE critic; DHS withdrew, switched to grand jury. EFF sued DHS and ICE for subpoena records. Congress members grilled tech CEOs in March on handling them—see Rep. Robin Kelly’s letter.
But compliance rolls on. One student, Momodou Thomas-Johnson, got Google’s alert after ICE eyed his anti-ICE posts. Google handed data without prior notice, breaching transparency promises, per Truthout. EFF’s Megan Gray highlighted it on X: ‘Google produces your ID to ICE even when not required by law to do so, and without telling you in advance.’
Duncan laments the fallout. ‘The saddest thing… is that if you abuse your authority like this, it undermines all the legitimate stuff you do.’ Perloff sees irony. ‘There was a long time where the United States government advised other countries on how to protect people within their territory from foreign oppression. And it is appalling to realize that now other countries may have to do that about us.’
Canada-U.S. ties strain under this. The targeted man lives north of the border. DHS exploits U.S. tech dominance. Google tracks globally. A summons hits. Data flows south. No entry required. X buzzes with parallels—Reddit subpoenas for anonymous ICE trackers, retiree’s Google data yanked after emailing a DHS lawyer. ACLU warns of chilling effects.
Legal pushback mounts. The Canadian’s suit tests Tariff Act limits. EFF’s April FOIA suit demands subpoena tallies. Past cases: Twitter sued DHS in 2017 over a similar summons, dropped after withdrawal. Reddit user sued in March; DHS pivoted to grand jury. Patterns emerge.
Tech’s role? Comply or contest. Google notified here. Not always. Transparency reports lag. Between contracts for ICE ads and data handovers, incentives blur. Millions paid to Google, Meta for recruitment, per critics. Now subpoenas flow freely.
Industry insiders watch closely. Administrative subpoenas scale cheaply. No warrants. Target dissent. Foreigners hit hardest—jurisdiction gaps. But Americans too: @montcowatch unmasked, protesters doxxed via Meta. Protests in Minneapolis, Chicago used facial recognition alongside.
What next? Courts may rein in. Congress probes. Or escalation. ICE eyes 24/7 social media monitoring via contractors and AI, Wired docs show. Trump era redux, but digitized. Free speech hangs. Privacy erodes. Even from afar.
DHS defends operations. Protecting agents from doxxing threats. Critics call it pretext. Passionate posts equated to peril. The Canadian’s words: support for Americans. Now under microscope. Abuse erodes trust. Legit probes suffer.
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