Siding With Trump, Facebook Suspends Chicago Community Group Issuing ICE Alerts

Chicago residents in recent weeks have found numerous ways to resist the Trump administration's deployment of hundreds of federal agents in its increasingly violent "Operation Midway Blitz" anti-immigration campaign—with thousands of people marching to demand armed officers leave the city, some physically intervening in arrests, and community members volunteering to patrol their neighborhoods to warn the public when agents are nearby.

But the alliance between Big Tech and the Trump administration on Tuesday interfered with efforts by more than 80,000 Chicagoland residents to show solidarity with immigrants and people of color, as Facebook suspended a community group where people have been tipping off their neighbors when they see US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other federal agents in public areas.

Days after far-right activist and conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, who has gained considerable influence in the White House despite holding no formal government position, spoke out against a group called ICE Sighting-Chicagoland, Facebook parent company Meta suspended the group to stop its 84,000 members from sharing information about impending ICE raids and enforcement actions.

Loomer wrote on the social media platform X on Sunday that "Big Tech executives" such as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg should "use this as an opportunity to be in compliance and to support President [Donald] Trump’s immigration policies, but they aren’t."

She said the presence of the community group was evidence of Zuckerberg's "leftist subversion of Trump and his policies."

Two days later, US Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that action had been taken to stop Chicago area residents from discussing the deployment of federal agents.

"Today, following outreach from the [Department of Justice], Facebook removed a large group page that was being used to dox and target ICE agents in Chicago,” said Bondi Tuesday.

"If the Facebook posts happen to bother Trump, will they still be uncensored, and will their 'free expression' be protected? If you understand what a Trump suck-up Zuckerberg is these days, you can probably take a wild guess."

Bondi repeated a claim by the Department of Homeland Security that immigration agents have faced escalating violence from protesters in Chicago. Few specific examples have backed up the claim, while ICE agents and other officers have been filmed tear-gassing a residential neighborhood; shooting pepper spray at a priest at a demonstration; slamming a congressional candidate on the ground; and holding a journalist on the ground before shoving her in an unmarked car, ramming into another vehicle while speeding away, and eventually releasing her without charges.

The Chicago Sun-Times noted two examples of immigration officers being injured on the job in Chicago recently: one who said his injuries he sustained during a traffic stop that proved fatal for an immigrant named Silverio Villegas González were "nothing major," and another who "hurt his leg chasing a protester."

The administrator of ICE Sighting-Chicagoland posted a screenshot of messages they had received from Meta, which accused the group of failing to follow Facebook's community standards. The group had never been reported or flagged previously.

Meta spokesperson Francis Brennan—a former campaign adviser for Trump during the 2020 election—told the Sun-Times the group had violated Facebook's “Coordinating Harm and Promoting Crime” policy, which bars groups and users from “outing the undercover status of law enforcement, military, or security personnel if the content contains the agent’s name, their face or badge, and any of the following: The agent’s law enforcement organization, the agent’s law enforcement operation, [or] explicit mentions of their undercover status.”

Facebook's policy was revised in 2023; it had previously banned people from sharing explicit identifying information about undercover agents, not mentions of the agencies they work for.

Zuckerberg said earlier this year that content moderation on Facebook had "gone too far" and apologized to Republican lawmakers for previously stopping users from spreading misinformation about Covid-19.

"If the Facebook posts happen to bother Trump, will they still be uncensored, and will their 'free expression' be protected? If you understand what a Trump suck-up Zuckerberg is these days, you can probably take a wild guess," wrote Joe Kukura at SFist on Tuesday.

Zuckerberg was one of several tech billionaires who attended Trump's inauguration in January. Last month he and other Silicon Valley executives attended a White House dinner where they "lavished praise" on the president as they discussed their investments in artificial intelligence and their hopes for a "pro-business, pro-innovation" approach to the technology from the administration.

At the AV Club on Wednesday, Mary Kate Carr said the removal of the ICE Sighting group was "yet another installment of 'How are tech billionaires carrying water for Donald Trump today?'"

"This is the same company that had policies allowing for chatbots to have 'sensual' conversations with kids, but discussing local law enforcement among neighbors is a bridge too far, huh?" wrote Carr.