Beware Of The Department Of Homeland Security If You've Posted Anything Critical Of ICE

       It wasn't that the thought had never occurred to me that posting blogs critical of Donald Trump and/or his accomplices might be risky. After all, the abuse of  power for self dealing and the abuse of power to deal out retribution are twin pillars of  the Trump agenda. 
        But I never took too seriously the thought that I might be affected. True, these days my blog posts do tend to be jeremiads against the authoritarianism, misdeeds and cruelty of the MAGA powers that be,

...still, the collective readership of my blog is, in truth, pretty small. And so I always figured  that no matter what I said, my voice was likely hundreds, maybe thousands,  of miles below the radar or interest of the Trump MAGAverse. 
         But then a couple of nights ago my hubby Tom and I sat scrolling on our devices through the day's news when he looked up from his reading. "Listen to this," he said. "It says in the New York Times that tech company workers have leaked that the Department of Homeland Security has subpoenaed all the social media sites for the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of people who criticize ICE on social media."
​           Upon hearing this I felt in the middle of my chest a sudden sensation  of...something: Fear? Anxiety? Anger? I'd say anxiety was the closest. "No, wait," I said, "that can't be right. Just about everybody I know criticizes ICE on social media. And my blog is on social media. I mean, my blog is social media...isn't it?"
           "You better read for yourself," said my mate. So I did.
           Sure enough, there was the article in the Times.       

        And in multiple other news sources, as well.

       I read a few of the articles, which were generally a dissemination of the information published in the Times and stated that the Department of Homeland Security has sent hundreds of administrative subpoenas to Google, Meta, Reddit, Discord and other social media companies demanding the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of users who've posted critical comments about Customs and Immigration Enforcement.
         But reading a little deeper, I learned that what DHS actually wanted was to find out the identities of the people behind social media accounts that don't have a real person's name attached to them. Such as:

        Apparently the social media companies have given the Department of Homeland Security the personal information behind a few of the accounts, which is appalling. 
         Still, I felt a moment of relief after reading that DHS was only after information on people whose names weren't attached to their critical posts. That wouldn't be me. My name is attached to the Facebook account on which I post my blogs. 
        But then it took only another moment for the light to click on in my brain that the reason DHS didn't subpoena the names of the people whose names were already on their social media posts was because...our names were already on our social media posts. 
          In an article in Military.com referenced below, Greg Nojeim, senior counsel and director of the Security and Surveillance Project at the Center for Democracy & Technology  said,  "The government can use (administrative subpoenas)  to compel the disclosure of your personal information even when there is no suspicion that you committed a crime. ICE is apparently using them to silence people who speak out."
         Which is. of course, the obvious answer to the obvious question of why the Department of Homeland Security wants information on people who criticize ICE: to silence - or do worse to - those of us who speak out.
         In the same Military.com article there was a related story about a man in the Philadelphia area who, upon reading in the Washington Post about a person seeking asylum from Afghanistan who had been badly treated by the Department of Homeland Security,  wrote an email to the DHS urging them to “apply principles of common sense and decency” in its treatment of the asylum seeker. Soon afterwards the man was notified that the Trump administration had issued a subpoena to Google seeking the man's identity and home address. Two weeks later two DHS agents and a police officer showed up at the man's residence and interrogated him. 
​       If this isn't proof that we are living in an authoritarian police state, I don't know what is.
        Still, I wonder - and worry: Is every one of us who has ever posted something negative about ICE on the radar of DHS? All tens of millions of us? Or are we all just little balls in a game of DHS police state roulette?  In any case, do we dare to keep speaking up?

​References:
​https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/dhs-anti-ice-social-media.html

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2026/02/17/dhs-collecting-big-tech-users-personal-data-issuing-subpoenas-ice-related-criticism.html