DHS Demanded REI Green Beanie Buyer Records — SkimNews
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- HSI agents subpoenaed REI in March for transaction info on all Minneapolis–St. Paul customers who purchased a specific dark green beanie since 2024; REI did not respond to questions about compliance.
- The beanie subpoena was one of 92 subpoenas issued in an investigation into 39 defendants from an ICE protest at a Minneapolis church whose pastor also worked as an acting ICE field office director.
- T-Mobile handed over six months of call and text logs for defendant and journalist Georgia Fort without notifying her, while Google refused to comply with a summons requesting a defendant's YouTube viewers and subscribers.
- Reddit objected on First Amendment grounds to 11 DHS subpoenas seeking info on accounts that posted critically about ICE, and the agency withdrew them; Meta also pushed back against at least one summons.
- One unnamed airline was asked not only for a defendant's past flight records but also to provide a "lookout notification" about their future travel.
- Senator Ron Wyden called the REI subpoena "flat-out absurd," arguing that customs summonses are meant for customs compliance, not "fishing expeditions into the lives of people critical of Donald Trump."
- Companies that receive 1509 customs summonses are typically asked to keep them secret; the total number issued since the start of the Trump administration remains unknown.
Why it matters: Customs summonses bypass judicial oversight, so DHS can demand purchase histories and communications without a judge's approval. The diverging corporate responses — Google and Reddit contesting, T-Mobile complying silently — show that whether your data gets handed over may hinge on which company holds it, not on your legal rights as a customer.
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