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to divide The Department of Homeland Security attempted to obtain a Canadian man’s location information, activity logs, and other identifying information from him Google After he criticized the Trump administration online after the killing Rene is good and Alex Pretty By federal immigration agents in Minneapolis early this year.
Lawyers for the man, who has not been named, are concerned in part because they say the man has not entered the United States in more than a decade. “I don’t know what the government knows about where our client lives, but clearly the government isn’t stopping to find out,” says Michael Perloff, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of the District of Columbia, which is representing the man in a lawsuit against DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullen over the subpoena. The lawsuit alleges that DHS violated the Customs Act, which gives the agency the authority to request records from companies and other parties.
Perloff says the government is using the fact that big tech companies are based in the United States to request information it wouldn’t be able to get otherwise. “It uses this geographical fact to obtain information that may be completely outside its jurisdiction,” he says. “I mean we’re talking about the physical movements of someone living in Canada.”
DHS and Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The request for the man’s location data was included in a request issued by the Department of Homeland Security to Google called a customs subpoena, which is supposed to be used to investigate issues related to importing goods and collecting customs duties.
“The law says it’s for records and certifications about the authenticity of the entry, the person’s responsibility for duties and taxes and duties, you know, and compliance with basic customs laws,” says Chris Duncan, a former assistant chief counsel for U.S. Customs and Border Protection who now works as a private attorney representing importers and exporters. “And that is all it was envisioned to be used for.”
A customs summons is a type of administrative subpoena, and is not reviewed by a judge or grand jury before it is served. According to the complaint, Google alerted the man about the request on February 9, despite a request included in the subpoena “not to disclose the existence of this subpoena for an indefinite period of time.”
Through his lawyer, the man told WIRED he initially mistook the notice as a prank or scam before realizing it was real.
The subpoena, included in the complaint, does not provide a specific reason as to why the man was under investigation other than to cite the Tariff Act of 1930. The man’s lawyers maintain that he did not export or import anything from the United States between September 1, 2025, and February 4, 2026, the time frame for which the government requested information.
Instead, the man’s lawyers claim the summons was served in response to the man’s online activities, including posts he made incriminating immigration enforcement agents after the killings of Judd and Preeti in January.
The man tells WIRED that watching members of the Trump administration “smear these two souls as terrorists was absolutely disgusting and infuriating. People have been told not to believe our eyes until the men responsible for the murders of two good Americans are released.”
“I felt like I needed to do something that would stand out and be seen by desperate Americans to show them that they have support and that they are not alone,” the man says of his online activism.