U.S. Department of Justice subpoenaed Reddit via secret D.C. grand jury to unmask anti-ICE critic

On March 31, 2026, the Department of Justice issued a subpoena ordering Reddit to appear before a secret federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., by April 14, compelling the company to produce the name, address, phone number, IP address, and other identifying information for an anonymous user who had posted criticism of ICE officers, according to a subpoena obtained by The Intercept. The grand jury subpoena came four days after DOJ withdrew an earlier administrative summons seeking the same user's data — an "administrative summons" ICE issued March 4 to an agent in Fairfax, Virginia, citing a Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act provision that has nothing to do with the user's posts. The user, represented by the Civil Liberties Defense Center (CLDC), had moved to quash that summons in the Northern District of California, where DOJ withdrew it rather than litigate.

Rather than dropping the matter, DOJ's Washington field office — through a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney — routed the same demand for the user's identity through a grand jury, a proceeding that is not adversarial and is sealed from public view. CLDC's litigation director, Lauren Regan, said the switch reflected a pattern of DOJ "strong-arming information they were denied through the courts legally" after repeatedly losing similar administrative- subpoena fights. EFF senior counsel David Greene said the use of a federal grand jury against a major tech company in this context was, to his knowledge, unprecedented in the current wave of ICE-related unmasking attempts, calling it "something to be taken very seriously." Reddit said it does not voluntarily share user data with government agencies and reviews such demands for legal sufficiency.

CLDC filed a motion to quash the grand jury subpoena in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, where the case was assigned to Judge James Boasberg.

Updates

2026-06-17 — Judge denied motion to quash and to unseal [4]

Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia denied the Civil Liberties Defense Center's motion to quash the grand jury subpoena and separately denied its motion to unseal the proceedings, according to CLDC. The ruling allows the grand jury to proceed with compelling Reddit to produce the anonymous user's identifying information. CLDC said it was weighing an appeal and other legal options.