DHS Tried to Reveal the Identity of a Canadian Who Dared to Post About Trump and ICE

We already know that the United States government is perfectly happy to trample over the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech of our own citizens in order to launch investigations into the identity of those who dare to anonymously post negative things about the administration online, and will even assemble a grand jury to demand the identity of someone posting the most innocuous material imaginable, but apparently the administration’s zeal to punish speech doesn’t even stop at our own national borders. No, even if you’re a Canadian who hasn’t visited the United States in more than a decade, you might wake up one morning to an email from Google, explaining that the Department of Homeland Security has issued them a subpoena seeking all of your Google data from the last year, with the exclusive intent on making your life hell because you had the audacity to voice an opinion about U.S. politics online. From another country.

That’s what recently happened to an anonymous Canadian John Doe, who in response is now fighting back in U.S. federal court, citing the DHS attempt to uncover “vast swaths of information” about him in punishment for social media posts critical of the Donald Trump administration. His lawsuit, brought on his behalf by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) offices in Washington DC, is suing DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, alleging that DHS has engaged in “a transparent gambit to chill speech the government doesn’t like.” The suit was also brought in northern California, where Google is headquartered.

The anonymous Canadian John Doe likewise dropped this banger of a pithy statement: “I have long admired the United States for its commitment to free speech. Never in a million years did I think that, after criticizing the U.S. government, I would be targeted with a summons seeking to find out who I am, where I live, where I go and what I read online. You don’t have to be from America to know that this is un-American.”

NEW: DHS is using a legal tool called a 1509 customs summons to try to obtain info from Google about a Canadian after he criticized the Trump admin online. He says he hasn’t been to the US in 10+ years and didn’t ship anything during the time period DHS asked about: www.wired.com/story/dhs-de…

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— maddy varner (@regret.bsky.social) May 4, 2026 at 10:55 AM

The Canadian social media user had been, in effect, an influencer and a troll, one of lord only knows how many millions posting around the world about U.S. culture and dumb political minutia, content the lawsuit described as “critical of President Trump and his administration.” He had also widely criticized ICE and DHS operations such as Minnesota’s Operation Metro Surge, which cost the life of residents Renee Good and Alex Pretti to state violence (which Republicans are fine with), as the two were slain by federal agents of ICE and Border Patrol respectively. This posting apparently drew the attention of DHS, and the Canadian user was informed in early February by Google that the tech giant had “received an administrative subpoena issued by the Department of Homeland Security compelling the release of information related to your Google account.” Notably, Google doesn’t actually confirm or deny whether they complied with the DHS demand, but it’s just another example of the federal government attempting to lean on social media giants into divulging the identities of their users for posting any sentiment critical of the administration, as the feds recently did in a case where they sought the identity of a reddit user.

As in that case, the government is making an incredulous use here of Section 1509 of the Tariff Act of 1930 as the justification for how and why they’re able to issue such as subpoena, a statute that provides the government with authority to enforce customs law by requesting “records, statements and declarations.” John Doe’s lawyers via the ACLU naturally point out that this is, in legal parlance, total bullshit that is both a purposefully wrong application of what is supposed to be tariff law, and a clear attempt to use subpoena power as a weapon to chill speech. And not even the speech of American citizens this time, but a random person in another country! The John Doe in question reportedly hasn’t even set foot in the United States since 2015.

“Even if the summons were issued for a proper purpose, the scope of the records sought would still far exceed 1509’s limits on what officials can use it to acquire,” argued ACLU senior staff attorney Michael Perloff in a statement with the lawsuit. “Not satisfied with trying to suppress speech at home, the Trump administration is now targeting dissenters abroad.”

Almost a decade ago, in fact, DHS’ own inspector general rebuked a similar attempted use of Section 1509 in a 2017 report when DHS, during the first Donald Trump administration, attempted to unmask the identity of a user on Twitter. In that case, the summons was withdrawn. But nine years later, in a second Trump administration now stuffed to the gills with nothing but sycophants with less respect for individual rights than ever before, one wonders if a now far more emboldened DHS could possibly care about that kind of precedent. Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s DHS has clearly focused on running a less publicly visible, clandestine operation than the constant shitshow that was Kristi Noem’s tenure, but they’ve clearly demonstrated there’s just as much calculated malice happening behind the scenes.