Judge issues injunction to keep DHS from attempting to block web page that monitors ICE

Caroline Kubzansky, Chicago Tribune on May 11, 2026

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A federal judge has ordered officials at the U.S. Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security to drop a campaign aimed at getting Meta and Apple to shut down a Chicago-based ICE monitoring page and app, according to court records.

The preliminary injunction order filed last week follows a mid-April ruling from U.S. District Judge Jorge L. Alonso in which he concluded that federal officials had effectively threatened Apple and Facebook with prosecution if they didn’t take “Eyes Up” app and the “ICE sightings – Chicagoland” Facebook group offline, citing multiple statements from former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and former Attorney General Pam Bondi.

“Although these statements may not be direct threats to prosecute Facebook and Apple, they are intimations of a threat,” Alonso wrote in the April 17 ruling. “And thinly veiled threats such as these constitute sufficient evidence on which Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on their claim.”

In the order issued May 5, Alonso reiterated that government officials were not allowed to “coerce or threaten” either technology giant with sanctions for reinstating the app or the Facebook group. The order also applies to previous government efforts to get the page and the app disabled and taken down, and gives DOJ and DHS supervisors a week to notify officers who had been part of that effort.

Social media pages where users documented possible and confirmed sightings of federal immigration agents have been a major mode of communication for Chicago-area residents and immigration activists. They were used with particular intensity during “Operation Midway Blitz,” the Trump administration’s sweeping arrest campaign against immigrants without legal status that roiled the Chicago area in late 2025.

A complaint alleging First Amendment violations first filed in the U.S. District Court in February alleged that one of the plaintiffs, Kassandra Rosado, created the ICE watch Facebook group to share information among users about sightings of federal immigration agents, shortly after the Trump administration announced that immigration officials would conduct “enhanced operations” in and around Chicago.

The group exploded in popularity in September 2025 as Midway Blitz swept through the region. Per the complaint, it only elicited a handful of violations during the time it existed.

Mark Hodges, an Indiana resident, started Eyes Up in August of 2025 so users could “preserve and view videos of ICE activity across the country,” the complaint states. However, the complaint continues, the app is “not useful for tracking ICE location or movement in real time” because the moderators review each video before making it publicly available.

But Bondi, one of the named defendants in the case, argued that apps like Eyes Up or ICEBlock — taken down around the same time as Eyes Up, per the complaint — threatened agents’ safety.

“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,” the now-former Attorney General wrote in a social media post. “The Department of Justice will continue engaging tech companies to eliminate platforms where radicals can incite imminent violence against federal law enforcement.”

According to the complaint, Apple had taken down a similar app called Red Dot the day before it removed Eyes Up from its App Store. Bondi later went on FOX News and said that Apple had done so in response to the DOJ’s demand, the complaint alleged.

Facebook disabled Rosado’s group in mid-October. It had about 70,000 users at that point. Bondi declared that the group “was being used to dox and target (ICE) agents in Chicago,” according to the complaint.

Rosado started a second group that included new moderation policies and discussion guidelines, which is still operational.

Alonso’s injunction gives DHS and DOJ officials until Tuesday to notify the government employees who had previously liaised with the technology companies about the app and the Facebook page as well as Apple and Meta themselves. The government has a week to document those actions and file those records with the court, the injunction states.

Neither the plaintiffs nor the government immediately responded to requests for comment.

The injunction doesn’t require Apple or Meta to reinstate the app or the Facebook page.

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(Chicago Tribune’s Jason Meisner contributed.)

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