Overview
- After reading an Oct. 30 Washington Post investigation, a 67-year-old suburban Philadelphia man emailed DHS lead prosecutor Joseph Dernbach urging caution in an Afghan deportation case.
- Within hours, he received a Google notice saying DHS had issued an administrative subpoena seeking information tied to his account.
- Days later, DHS agents came to his home, showed him a copy of his email, and told him they found no criminal violation before leaving about 20 minutes later.
- Google told him it had not yet responded to the demand and notified him despite a government request to delay, as the ACLU filed a pro bono motion to block disclosure and argue the subpoena was unlawful and chilled protected speech.
- Reporting situates the incident in a wider uptick in DHS administrative subpoenas, with Google citing 28,622 U.S. subpoenas in the first half of 2025, a 15 percent increase.