Using a personal smartphone in a combat zone, especially apps with location services enabled, creates a serious, exploitable risk. Adversaries no longer need sophisticated hacking; they can simply buy your location trail from commercial data brokers.

U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) has acknowledged receiving multiple reports that foreign adversaries are exploiting commercially available cell phone location data to surveil and target American service members in active war zones, as first reported by Reuters. This is particularly concerning in CENTCOM’s area of responsibility, including the volatile Persian Gulf region amid heightened tensions with Iran.

In a letter dated April 14, 2026, and shared with Congress by U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) on May 28, 2026, CENTCOM acknowledged receiving multiple threat reports detailing how adversaries are purchasing commercially available location data from data brokers, often with nothing more than a credit card.”

The CENTCOM letter warned that “commercial location data can be used to identify where U.S. troops congregate and their pattern of life, which can be exploited by adversaries to target attacks such as missiles, drones, and roadside bombs.”

This represents the first official U.S. acknowledgment of such threats in an active conflict zone.

This issue dates back to incidents like the 2018 Strava heatmap that inadvertently exposed U.S. bases and patrol routes. The problem has persisted and worsened with the explosion of ad-tech and data brokers. The Pentagon has issued guidance over the years (e.g., restricting GPS-enabled devices in operational areas), but enforcement and awareness remain challenging, especially with personal devices.

On May 28, 2026, Senator Ron Wyden, Rep. Pat Harrigan (R-NC, former Special Forces), and a bipartisan group of 12 other lawmakers sent a letter to the Pentagon’s Chief Information Officer. In their letter, they sharply criticized the Department of Defense for failing to implement adequate safeguards and urged immediate action, including disabling advertising IDs, restricting location sharing, phasing out vulnerable browsers such as Google Chrome, and enforcing stricter Operational Security (OPSEC).

The letter specifically noted that browsers like Chrome “are built from the ground up to collect and share user data.”

As reported by the New York Post, major adtech companies were contacted for comment. Two large firms did not respond. Google defended its Chrome browser, stating it features “industry-leading security” and that it has “long advocated for stronger rules and safeguards against data brokers.”

The broader implications are clear: adversaries no longer need sophisticated hacking techniques — U.S. service members’ everyday apps are doing the work for them. Protecting troop locations is not merely a technical issue; it is fundamental to maintaining deterrence and ensuring America projects strength rather than exploitable weakness.

Critics argue that decades of weak data privacy regulations and the unchecked growth of the adtech industry have left U.S. forces exposed. 

America’s military cannot prevail if its movements are sold on the open market. 

The left wing riots against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) occurring outside Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey is not about compassion, it is not about due process, and it is not about the Constitution. It is about whether the American people are permitted to get the immigration policy they voted for, or whether a mob of rioters, aided by sanctuary politicians and cheered on by the professional left, can veto the result of a national election in the streets.

President Trump campaigned on deporting illegal aliens. He did not whisper it. He did not hide it in the fine print. He made it one of the central promises of his campaign. The American people heard him clearly, voted accordingly, and gave him a mandate to restore the rule of law at the border and inside the country. Now, as that promise is being kept, the same political class that spent years pretending immigration enforcement was somehow optional has discovered its outrage. At Delaney Hall, a privately operated ICE detention facility in Newark run by GEO Group, that outrage has spilled into barricades, fires, projectiles, assaults on law enforcement, and mass arrests.

According to multiple reports, the protests began after detainees inside the facility claimed they were engaged in a hunger and labor strike over conditions, including food, medical care, visitation, crowding, and the pace of immigration proceedings. Those claims deserve to be reviewed through lawful oversight. What they do not justify is a mob attempting to obstruct a federal detention facility, block vehicles, attack barriers, and menace officers who are doing their jobs. By Sunday night of May 31, 2026 Newark Mayor Ras Baraka had imposed a 9:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. curfew around the facility. Police closed off Doremus Avenue. Roughly 100 protesters remained after the curfew announcement. Riot police advanced. Tear gas was deployed. At least 20 protesters were arrested, with some reports placing the number between 20 and 25. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) posted video from the scene on X and warned plainly: “If you riot, you will face the consequences. Law and order prevails. ZERO tolerance for rioters.” That is exactly the correct message.

The left would like Americans to believe that every anti-ICE demonstration is a candlelight vigil and every rioter is a civil rights marcher. The facts in Newark say otherwise. Reports describe protesters tearing down barricades, throwing projectiles, lighting tires on fire, blocking entrances and exits, using makeshift shields, and clashing with law enforcement. One wall near the arrests was reportedly marked with the words “KILL ICE.” This is not dissent. This is intimidation.

The most disturbing allegations involve direct attacks on federal officers. The Department of Justice (DOJ) charged 26 year old Brendan John Geier of Madison, New Jersey, with assaulting federal officers and causing bodily injury after he allegedly kicked one ICE officer and bit two others outside Delaney Hall. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said peaceful protest does not mean violently attacking federal law enforcement. He also made clear that rioters who assault federal officers will be held accountable. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin was equally blunt, saying the Trump administration will stand with law enforcement and that anyone who assaults an officer will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. There are also reports that a man identified as Nicholas Scelfo was arrested after allegedly threatening to kill an ICE officer and the officer’s family. FBI Director Kash Patel credited video evidence and facial recognition in locating the suspect within 24 hours. This is what serious law enforcement looks like. Threaten officers and their families, and the government should find you, arrest you, and prosecute you.

President Trump has correctly dismissed the staged nature of these demonstrations, calling the protesters “fake” and “paid for” while defending the quality of federal detention operations. Critics may not like his bluntness, but he is saying what millions of Americans already suspect when they see identical signs, choreographed outrage, and the same activist machinery arriving anywhere immigration law is enforced.

New Jersey’s elected Democrats have tried to have it both ways. Governor Mikie Sherrill condemned the violence and admitted that masked individuals attacked barriers, threw projectiles, used barriers as weapons, and lit tires on fire. She also said those actions endangered both peaceful protesters and law enforcement. Yet she continues to call for Delaney Hall to be closed and frames the controversy around detainee conditions rather than the broader question of whether federal immigration law will be obeyed. Mayor Baraka imposed the curfew because even Newark’s left wing leadership could not ignore the chaos outside the facility. Senator Andy Kim and other Democratic officials have demanded oversight, criticized conditions, and accused ICE and GEO Group of escalating tensions. Congressional Democrats have called the facility inhumane and demanded its closure. Their letter to DHS argues that immigration detention has expanded too far and that many detainees are nonviolent. Those claims are the political argument. The riot is the reality. If elected officials want oversight, they can request inspections. If they want changes in detention standards, they can legislate. If they want to challenge federal policy, they can go to court. What they cannot do is wink at street disorder while pretending to be surprised when activists take the hint.

The question in Newark is bigger than Delaney Hall. It is whether America still has a border, whether federal law still means anything, and whether a president elected on a clear immigration mandate is allowed to carry it out. The American people did not vote for open borders. They did not vote for sanctuary chaos. They did not vote for mobs blocking federal facilities. They voted for deportations. They voted for enforcement. They voted for the restoration of order after years of deliberate disorder.

ICE officers are not villains. They are federal law enforcement officers carrying out lawful orders under the authority of a president elected by the American people. The men and women assigned to these facilities did not write the immigration laws. They enforce them. Attacking them, threatening their families, biting them, kicking them, and calling it activism is a moral obscenity. The left has always understood the symbolic power of immigration enforcement. That is why ICE has become its chosen target. Destroy ICE, and immigration law becomes a suggestion. Demonize detention, and deportation becomes impossible. Turn every facility into a battlefield, and the policy chosen by voters can be strangled by permanent protest. That is the strategy. Newark is merely the latest front.

President Trump should not retreat one inch. DHS should maintain the perimeter. DOJ should prosecute every assault, every threat, and every act of obstruction. New Jersey officials should stop enabling a climate in which federal officers are treated as fair game. The American people should understand exactly what they are watching. This is not a spontaneous uprising against injustice. It is organized resistance to the enforcement of American sovereignty. The rioters outside Delaney Hall are not defending democracy. They are defying it.

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon has filed a motion requesting that U.S. District Judge Eleanor L. Ross, an Obama appointee, recuse herself from the high-stakes federal lawsuit United States v. Raffensperger.

Judge Ross has faced intense criticism after the Eleventh Circuit Judicial Council privately reprimanded her for judicial misconduct in violation of the Code of Conduct for United States Judges. The Judicial Council’s report detailed two distinct elements of misconduct investigated together in a single disciplinary case.

She attended a partisan victory party celebrating Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s Democratic primary win in May 2024 — walking through a lobby adorned with campaign signs, drinking martinis at what was effectively a victory celebration, and later showing photos from the event to her staff the next day.

This was not a neutral gathering; it was a celebration for the same prosecutor whose high-profile RICO case against President Trump and 18 co-defendants collapsed amid scandals involving her romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade. Willis’s office was ultimately disqualified by Georgia courts, and the charges were dismissed.

Separately, Judge Ross engaged in a two-year extramarital affair with a high-ranking Atlanta Police Department officer (Deputy Chief Kelley Collier), including sexual encounters in her courthouse chambers during business hours that were audible to law clerks and staff. She also initially made false statements to investigators before admitting the conduct, according to Bloomberg Law.

These violations, which undermine the impartiality, integrity, and dignity required by a federal judge’s oath of office, resulted in a private reprimand, the mildest formal sanction short of removal. The judge remains on the bench.

Federal judges are expected to remain strictly non-partisan and to avoid any appearance of political favoritism. “A judge who attended a party celebrating the election of a Democrat best known for prosecuting a Republican president for alleged election interference cannot then preside over a case concerning that president’s efforts to ensure election integrity,” Dhillon argued in the filing.

The lawsuit seeks to compel Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to produce Georgia’s full, unredacted voter registration database to the Department of Justice.

It aims to enforce states’ obligations to maintain accurate voter rolls under the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), the Civil Rights Act of 1960, and related federal laws, essential protections designed to safeguard election accuracy and address vulnerabilities exposed in 2020.

Ross’s attendance at the Willis victory party, given her prior professional relationship with Willis in the Fulton County DA’s office, creates an appearance of impropriety.

This appearance of bias violates 28 U.S.C. § 455, which requires judges to disqualify themselves when their impartiality might reasonably be questioned.

Judge Ross’s documented misconduct, combined with her connection to Willis, whose failed prosecution involved romantic conflicts with the special prosecutor she hired, lavish trips funded by him, and serious ethical lapses, raises serious concerns of partisan influence.

For any judge linked to celebrating Willis’s primary victory to now rule on Trump administration efforts to ensure election integrity creates an untenable conflict.

Georgia remains a central focal point of the 2020 election controversies. Allowing a judge with these documented violations to block or delay critical voter integrity efforts would further erode public trust in the courts and the electoral process.

Complete, unredacted voter registration records are essential for identifying non-citizen voting, removing outdated or inaccurate registrations, and addressing other vulnerabilities that continue to undermine citizen confidence in election integrity.

This motion comes as the Trump administration aggressively advances voter integrity initiatives nationwide, pushing back against years of resistance to fundamental safeguards such as accurate voter roll maintenance. With the June 3 hearing fast approaching, recusal is not optional. When the appearance of bias is this clear, disqualification is essential to upholding judicial neutrality and safeguarding the integrity of our elections.