Google provided U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) with a large amount of personal data belonging to a student and journalist without a judge-approved subpoena, according to a report by The Intercept.
The data belonged to Amandla Thomas-Johnson, a British student and journalist who briefly attended a pro-Palestinian protest in 2024 while studying at Cornell University in New York. Google reportedly shared Thomas-Johnson’s usernames, physical addresses, IP addresses, phone numbers, subscriber identities, and an itemized list of Google services tied to his account.
The company also turned over sensitive financial information, including credit card and bank account numbers linked to the account.
According to the report, ICE obtained the data using an administrative subpoena that included a gag order and did not specify why Thomas-Johnson’s information was being requested. Thomas-Johnson previously said the demand for his data came within two hours of Cornell informing him that the U.S. government had revoked his student visa.
Administrative subpoenas are legal requests issued directly by federal agencies without approval from a judge. While they cannot compel companies to hand over email contents, search history, or precise location data, they can be used to request metadata and identifying information to de-anonymize individuals.
Unlike court orders, companies are not legally required to comply with administrative subpoenas.
The case is the latest example of U.S. authorities using administrative subpoenas to obtain data related to individuals critical of the Trump administration. Similar requests have reportedly targeted anonymous Instagram accounts that track ICE activity, as well as protesters and critics of government policies.
Google and ICE did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Last week, digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) sent a letter to Amazon, Apple, Discord, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Reddit, urging them to stop complying with administrative subpoenas from the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE.
“Based on our own contact with targeted users, we are deeply concerned your companies are failing to challenge unlawful surveillance and defend user privacy and speech,” the letter stated.
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The EFF called on companies to require court confirmation before disclosing user data and to notify affected users with enough time for them to challenge subpoenas independently.
Thomas-Johnson told The Intercept that the case highlights the risks of modern surveillance.
“We need to think very hard about what resistance looks like under these conditions,” he said, “where the government and Big Tech know so much about us, can track us, can imprison, [and] can destroy us in a variety of ways.”
