Lawsuit: DHS wants “unlimited subpoena authority” to unmask ICE critics

Summary

DHS seeking “unlimited subpoena authority” DHS alleged that the community watch group posting “pictures and videos of agents’ faces, license plates, and weapons, among other things,” was akin to “threatening ICE agents to impede the performance of their duties.” Claiming that the subpoena had nothing to do with silencing government critics, they argued that DHS is authorized to investigate the group and that compelling interest supersedes Doe’s First Amendment rights. According to Doe’s most recent court filing, DHS is pushing a broad reading of a statute that empowers DHS to subpoena information about the “importation/exportation of merchandise"—like records to determine duties owed or information to unmask a drug smuggler or child sex trafficker. DHS claims the statute isn’t just about imports and exports but also authorizes DHS to seize information about anyone they can tie to an investigation of potential crimes that violate US customs laws. However, it seems to make no sense, Doe argued, that Congress would “silently embed unlimited subpoena authority in a provision keyed to the importation of goods.” Doe hopes the US district judge will agree that DHS’s summons was unconstitutional. “The subscriber information for social media accounts publishing speech critical of ICE that DHS seeks is completely unrelated to the importation/exportation of merchandise; the records are outside the scope of DHS’s summons power,” Doe alleged. And even if the court agrees on DHS’s reading of the statute, DHS has not established that unmasking the owner of the community watch accounts would be relevant to any legitimate criminal investigation, Doe alleged. Doe’s posts were “pretty innocuous,” lawyer says To convince the court that the case was really about chilling speech, Doe attached every post made on the group’s Facebook and Instagram feeds. None show threats or arguably implicit threats to “assault, kidnap, or murder any federal official,” as DHS claimed. Instead, the users s...