The Trump administration has ratcheted up its use of subpoenas to seek information from big technology companies about users critical of its immigration policies.
Now, with Democrats pushing to regain power in the midterm elections, Silicon Valley is ramping up its quiet resistance.
Board members and top executives inside big tech companies are trying to insulate their firms from potential future Democratic-led congressional investigations and respond to user and employee concerns, while still placating the Trump administration, people familiar with
The Trump administration has ratcheted up its use of subpoenas to seek information from big technology companies about users critical of its immigration policies.
Now, with Democrats pushing to regain power in the midterm elections, Silicon Valley is ramping up its quiet resistance.
Board members and top executives inside big tech companies are trying to insulate their firms from potential future Democratic-led congressional investigations and respond to user and employee concerns, while still placating the Trump administration, people familiar with the matter said. Corporate executives anticipate Democrats will gain more power in Congress after the midterms, and some lawmakers are already asking why the companies handed over sensitive user information.
Meta Platforms and Alphabet’s Google in recent months have taken steps including pushing back against what they see as overbroad demands from the Department of Homeland Security for information and delaying responses to some requests, according to current and former employees, executives and advisers familiar with the matter. Tech companies including TikTok have updated user notification policies to tell customers more about when their information is given to law enforcement, as several Democratic lawmakers tee up investigations into how user information is shared.
“They need to be prepared to say, under oath, why they did what they did,” said Rep. Shri Thanedar (D., Mich.), who co-launched an investigation into tech companies’ compliance with these requests earlier this year.
Over the past year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency within DHS, has scoured Google, Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, Reddit, TikTok and X for speech that it deems a threat to federal agents or enforcement actions, The Wall Street Journal previously reported. ICE has asked Google for information about certain YouTube channels, Meta for information about anonymous accounts that post about immigration-enforcement activity and other social-media companies about customers’ personal information, according to legal filings.
Social-media companies have billions of users across products, from Google’s Gmail and YouTube to Meta’s Instagram and Facebook and online communities like Reddit and TikTok, often collecting information about customers including their names, addresses, IP addresses and phone numbers.
Many of the requests for information sent to tech companies have been made using administrative subpoenas, which—unlike judicial search warrants or grand jury subpoenas—are issued directly by ICE officials without prior review or approval by a judge. The surge in administrative subpoenas is a departure from standard federal practice, according to former Democratic and Republican officials.
Some companies, including Meta and Google, have noticed DHS in recent weeks increasingly working with the Justice Department to send grand jury subpoenas, which carry higher legal penalties for noncompliance, to compel tech firms to share user information, people familiar with the matter said.
Some top Meta executives have informally discussed how the company’s handling of such subpoenas could leave it exposed to Democratic scrutiny if control of Congress flips, people familiar with the discussions said.
Google executives have privately expressed similar concerns, as well as concerns that the Trump administration could retaliate by seeking even more user data if they don’t comply, people with knowledge of the discussions said. The company still faces antitrust cases brought by the federal government and doesn’t want to draw extra attention, the people said.
A spokesperson for ICE said operations are “conducted in accordance with applicable law and policy.”
A White House spokeswoman said the Trump administration supports all Americans’ constitutional rights, including freedom of speech.
“Violence, threats, and conspiracies to impede law enforcement operations are not protected by the First Amendment,” said White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis.
Record requests
Google received a record number of subpoenas from the U.S. government—about 28,600—between January and June 2025, which includes Trump’s early months in office, and a similar number in the second half of that year, according to company transparency reports.
Such requests have been far-reaching. In a Minnesota case, DHS subpoenaed Google for “subscriber information, subscriber names, and IP address information” associated with certain YouTube channels, including those for Megyn Kelly and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Google privately pushed back, court records show, arguing in an April email that the summons DHS used was designed for investigating imports of prohibited items.
Google “does not have sufficient information to evaluate the legal basis for issuance of the subpoena,” the company’s legal investigations support team wrote, “including whether the subpoena relates to the importation of prohibited merchandise.”
A spokesperson for Google said the company’s processes for handling law-enforcement requests are designed to protect users’ privacy while meeting Google’s legal obligations, noting that they “push back against those that are overbroad.”
In another instance, DHS requested that Google turn over personal information about a Canadian citizen living outside the U.S., including his name and addresses, according to court records. The man later sued Markwayne Mullin, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, alleging the subpoena was an attempt to chill free speech after he criticized the Trump administration online.
The company opposed one subpoena in a North Carolina court, in what legal experts say represents Google’s most forceful attempt yet to push back against the administration’s expanded use of its power to obtain user information.
Google described the Justice Department’s request in court filings as “a sweeping grant of almost unlimited subpoena power.”
The sharp increase in requests, as well as media reports detailing how the Trump administration was using administrative subpoenas to target critics, led to internal dissent from employees who complained that the company was failing its users by handing over data.
In February, the Washington Post reported that DHS had asked Google for the identity of a Pennsylvania retiree who had emailed a federal prosecutor about an immigration case and subsequently received a visit from federal agents.
Google employees took to internal message boards with questions about the case, according to people familiar with the conversations. Why had Google notified the user about the administrative subpoena from a “noreply” email address that they couldn’t respond to? What was Google’s policy for giving user information to the government?
DHS—which had tracked down the man on its own, without the help of his user data from Google—ultimately dropped its request after the user found legal representation and pushed back in court.
Late last year, Google updated its custom portal for law-enforcement requests as the number of administrative subpoenas ballooned and employees realized they couldn’t properly track them, people familiar with the matter said. Now the company monitors administrative subpoenas separately. The company also lengthened the time users have to respond.
Pushing back
Sen. Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D., Wash.) sent a letter to the chief justice of the Supreme Court and the acting head of the Government Accountability Office in September to curtail federal agencies’ use of subpoena power for domestic surveillance. They accused ICE’s investigative arm of using subpoenas to “surveil, intimidate, and suppress the free speech of ordinary citizens and even the free press.”
Tech companies will at times request clarifications from DHS rather than comply with information requests straight away, people involved in that correspondence said. When that happens, the agency often allows the requests to expire without following up, they said.
Meta disclosed that it produced some data in 88.8% of cases in which it received U.S. government requests between July and December of last year.
It has pushed back, court documents and internal DHS correspondence obtained by the digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation show, questioning at least once DHS’s request for the identity of an Instagram user last year. Meta later notified the user that it planned to move forward with the subpoena, and the user, through their own legal representation, filed a motion to quash it. DHS ultimately withdrew the request.
In recent weeks, members of Meta’s law-enforcement team decided not to respond to a grand jury subpoena regarding user speech on its platform, hoping the federal government would drop the matter, people familiar with the decision said.
DHS has also sought information about users on X, Reddit and TikTok who have been critical of immigration actions, according to people close to the companies. X didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Reddit said it “routinely” pushes back “when requests are overly broad or threaten users’ privacy, or civil rights, and whenever possible, we notify users so they can challenge a request.”
TikTok executives decided to amend the company’s privacy disclosures in mid-September, strengthening language about its practice of notifying U.S. users about legal requests related to them unless it is prohibited by law or exceptional circumstances apply.
Write to Emily Glazer at Emily.Glazer@wsj.com, Georgia Wells at georgia.wells@wsj.com and Hannah Critchfield at hannah.critchfield@wsj.com
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