The US Department of Justice has issued grand jury subpoenas to both X and Reddit, demanding the personal information — including names, addresses, and banking details — of at least two anonymous users who posted content critical of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Bloomberg reported on May 28, citing legal records shared by attorneys for the affected users. The subpoenas were issued by the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, led by Jeanine Pirro, a close Trump ally. Both platforms notified the affected users and provided a brief window to challenge the demands in court before the companies would be compelled to comply. Attorneys for both users said their clients’ posts were protected political speech: the Reddit user posted sharp criticism of ICE, while the X user made a sarcastic comment about the ICE agent who shot Renee Good in Minneapolis on January 7 — a post the user’s lawyer, Joshua Koltun, described as containing “not a trace or an inkling that any violence was intended.” In both cases, DHS initially issued administrative summons that were subsequently dropped, after which the DOJ stepped in with grand jury subpoenas, a tool that carries the formal weight of a criminal investigation.
The move marks a significant escalation in the Trump administration’s efforts to unmask online critics of its immigration enforcement apparatus, which began in early 2025 with the pursuit of apps like ICEBlock — an app that tracked ICE vehicle movements that was removed from the Apple and Google app stores in October 2025 after official pressure — before turning to individual social media users. Using grand jury subpoenas rather than administrative summons requires framing the investigation as a criminal matter and removes the case from administrative review into federal court proceedings, raising the legal stakes considerably. Civil liberties attorneys argue the government’s approach inverts First Amendment doctrine, under which political criticism of a government agency occupies the highest tier of protected speech and survives unmasking demands only in narrow circumstances that these cases almost certainly do not meet. The DOJ did not comment; DHS denied any intent to suppress free speech.