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A Brown County, Indiana, man has scored an early victory in his legal case against the U.S. attorney general and Homeland Security secretary, who he is suing for targeting an app made by his company that aims to track federal law enforcement operations, a federal judge has ruled.
On Friday, an Illinois district court judge granted Mark Hodge’s motion for a preliminary injunction to halt the government’s allegedly coercive acts that resulted in Apple delisting the app Hodge developed from its App Store.
Judge Jorge Alonso wrote in the order that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits of their claim that former Attorney General Pam Bondi and former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem violated their First Amendment free speech rights. The plaintiffs are Kreisau Group, a company owned by Hodge, and Kassandra Rosado, a Chicago woman who created a Facebook group to monitor U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in the city.
“The First Amendment protects our right to share information about our government, including reporting on what law enforcement does in public,” said Colin McDonell, a senior attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE, which sued the government on behalf of Hodge and Rosado, in a written statement Tuesday. “This is a very encouraging ruling, and we look forward to fully vindicating our clients’ rights as the case progresses.”
FIRE filed the complaint in February, arguing that Bondi and Noem “strong-armed” Apple into removing Kreisau Group’s ICE-monitoring app, Eyes App, from its App Store, and Facebook into removing Rosado’s group.
The app allows users to upload, record or access videos of ICE activity and police encounters nationwide, according to Kreisau Group.
A DHS spokesperson did not directly respond to Friday’s ruling, instead reiterating past comments that ICE tracking apps endanger law enforcement officers.
“These apps are a method to interfere with law enforcement activities and harbor illegal aliens, both of which are also separately illegal,” a DHS spokesperson said in an email Tuesday, adding that DHS officers are facing significant increases in assaults and death threats.
According to the complaint, some videos on the app have captured ICE officers engaged in hostile confrontations with individuals, including pulling a U.S. citizen from a car and throwing the person to the ground, and shooting a protesting pastor in the head with a pepper ball.
Eyes Up became available on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store in August, but Apple removed it in the fall, which FIRE alleges came in response to pressure from Bondi and Noem.
In Friday’s order, Judge Alonso highlighted Bondi and Noem’s past comments as reasoning for his decision.
On Oct. 2, 2025, Bondi told Fox News that the DHS had contacted Apple, “demanding” it remove a separate ICE-tracking app, ICEBlock, from its App Store, which it did. But FIRE says Apple also removed Eyes Up.
And, in a social media post in which Noem wrote that “platforms like Facebook must be PROACTIVE in stopping the doxxing of our [ICE] law enforcement,” she also added that the government “will prosecute those who dox our agents to the fullest extent of the law.”
“Although these statements may not be direct threats to prosecute Facebook and Apple, they are intimations of a threat,” Alonso wrote. “And thinly veiled threats such as these constitute sufficient evidence on which Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on their claim.”
For plaintiffs to win a preliminary injunction, Alonso said, they must establish that they are likely to succeed on the merits; that they are likely to suffer irreparable harm if they don’t get preliminary relief; the balance of equities tips in their favor; and that the requested injunction is in the public interest.
It’s unclear at this moment whether Apple and Facebook will reinstate Hodge’s app and Rosado’s group, but the decision will now be fully up to the companies.
“Before the government stepped in and demanded removal, Apple and Facebook had no problem with Kreisau Group’s app and Kassandra’s Facebook group,” FIRE’s McDonell said. “The ruling prohibits the government from continuing to coerce Apple and Facebook, with the aim of getting the government out of the picture when it comes to these decisions.”
According to the Friday ruling, the injunction will allow the two companies to make their own decisions about the plaintiffs’ speech, rather than be pressured by the defendants.
The case is Kassandra Rosado and Kreisau Group LLC v. Pamela Bondi, in her official capacity as Attorney General, and Kristi Noem, in her official capacity as Secretary of Homeland Security (1:26-cv-01532).
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