Twitter filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on Thursday in response to Homeland Security Department officials demanding that the social media company reveal who is behind an anonymous account that has been critical of federal immigration policies.
The lawsuit has been filed with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. It shows that DHS reached out in March about the identity of the @ALT_USCIS account, which has 43,000 followers.
Twitter claims the government “unlawfully abusing a limited-purpose investigatory tool” to “unmask” the identity of the user behind the account.
In an email, Twitter told the Washington Examiner, “We don’t have any comment beyond what is in the filing.”
A DHS spokesperson declined to comment when asked by Recode.
