GoKawiilIn September 2024, Amandla Thomas-Johnson was a Ph.D. candidate studying in the U.S. on a student visa when he briefly attended a pro-Palestinian protest. In April 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sent Google an administrative subpoena requesting his data. The next month, Google gave Thomas-Johnson's information to ICE without giving him the chance to challenge the subpoena, breaking a nearly decade-long promise to notify users before handing their data to law enforcement.
Today, the Electronic Frontier Foundation sent complaints to the California and New York Attorneys General asking them to investigate Google for deceptive trade practices for breaking that promise. You can read about the complaints here. Below is Thomas-Johnson's account of his ordeal.
Out of touch but not out of reach
I thought my ordeal with U.S. immigration authorities was over a year ago, when I left the country, crossing into Canada at Niagara Falls.
By that point, the Trump administration had effectively turned federal power against international students like me. After I attended a pro-Palestine protest at Cornell University—for all of five minutes—the administration’s rhetoric about cracking down on students protesting what we saw as genocide forced me into hiding for three months. Federal agents came to my home looking for me. A friend was detained at an airport in Tampa and interrogated about my whereabouts.
I’m currently a Ph.D. student. Before that, I was a reporter. I’m a dual British and Trinadad and Tobago citizen. I have not been accused of any crime.
I believed that once I left U.S. territory, I had also left the reach of its authorities. I was wrong.
The email
Weeks later, in Geneva, Switzerland, I received what looked like a routine email from Google. It informed me that the company had already handed over my account data to the Department of Homeland Security.
At first, I wasn’t alarmed. I had seen something similar before. An associate of mine, Momodou Taal, had received advance notice from Google and Facebook that his data had been requested. He was given advanced notice of the subpoenas, and law enforcement eventually withdrew them before the companies turned over his data.
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