British Activist Blasts ‘Sociopathic Greed’ of Big Tech After US Judge Blocks His Detention
“I chose to take on the biggest companies in the world, to hold them accountable, to speak truth to power. There is a cost attached to that,” said Imran Ahmed, one of five Europeans targeted by the Trump administration.
Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, is one of five Europeans targeted by the Trump administration with a travel ban.
(Photo: Imran Ahmed)
Jessica Corbett
Dec 26, 2025
COMMON DREAMS
After a US judge on Thursday blocked President Donald Trump’s administration from detaining one of the European anti-disinformation advocates hit with a travel ban earlier this week, Imran Ahmed suggested that he is being targeted because artificial intelligence and social media companies “are increasingly under pressure as a result of organizations like mine.”
Ahmed is the CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). The 47-year-old Brit lives in Washington, DC with his wife and infant daughter, who are both US citizens. While the Trump administration on Tuesday also singled out Clare Melford of the Global Disinformation Index, Josephine Ballon and Anna-Lena von Hodenberg of HateAid, and Thierry Breton, a former European commissioner who helped craft the Digital Services Act, Ahmed is reportedly the only one currently in the United States.
On Wednesday, Ahmed, who is a legal permanent resident, sued top Trump officials including US Attorney General Pam Bondi, Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting Director Todd Lyons, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio in the District Court for the Southern District of New York.
“Rather than disguise its retaliatory motive, the federal government was clear that Mr. Ahmed is being ‘SANCTIONED’ as punishment for the research and public reporting carried out by the nonprofit organization that Mr. Ahmed founded and runs,” the complaint states. “In other words, Mr. Ahmed faces the imminent prospect of unconstitutional arrest, punitive detention, and expulsion for exercising his basic First Amendment rights.”
“The government’s actions are the latest in a string of escalating and unjustifiable assaults on the First Amendment and other rights, one that cannot stand basic legal scrutiny,” the filing continues. “Simply put, immigration enforcement—here, immigration detention and threatened deportation—may not be used as a tool to punish noncitizen speakers who express views disfavored by the current administration.”
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Just a day later, Judge Vernon Broderick, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, issued a temporary restraining order, blocking the administration from arresting or detaining Ahmed. The judge also scheduled a conference for Monday afternoon.
The US Department of State said Thursday that “the Supreme Court and Congress have repeatedly made clear: The United States is under no obligation to allow foreign aliens to come to our country or reside here.”
Ahmed’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, said that “the federal government can’t deport a green-card holder like Imran Ahmed, with a wife and young child who are American, simply because it doesn’t like what he has to say.”
In the complaint and interviews published Friday, Ahmed pointed to his group’s interactions with Elon Musk, a former member of the Trump and administration and the richest person on Earth. He also controls the social media platform X, which sued CCDH in 2023.
“We were sued by Elon Musk a couple of years ago, unsuccessfully; a court found that he was trying to impinge on our First Amendment rights to free speech by using law to try and silence our accountability work,” Ahmed told the BBC.
Months after a federal judge in California threw out that case last year, Musk publicly declared “war” on the watchdog.
“What it has been about is companies that simply do not want to be held accountable and, because of the influence of big money in Washington, are corrupting the system and trying to bend it to their will, and their will is to be unable to be held accountable,” Ahmed told the Guardian. “There is no other industry, that acts with such arrogance, indifference, and a lack of humility and sociopathic greed at the expense of people.”
Ahmed explained that he spent Christmas away from his wife and daughter because of the Trump administration’s track record of quickly sending targeted green-card holders far away from their families. He said: “I chose to take on the biggest companies in the world, to hold them accountable, to speak truth to power. There is a cost attached to that. My family understands that.”
The British newspaper noted that when asked whether he thought UK politicians should use X, the former Labour Party adviser told the Press Association, “Politicians have to make decisions for themselves, but every time they post on X, they are putting a buck in Mr. Musk’s pocket and I think they need to question their own consciences and ask themselves whether or not they think they can carry on doing that.”
Ahmed also said that it was “telling that Mr. Musk was one of the first and most vociferous in celebrating the press release” about the sanctions against him and the others.
“He said it was great, and it is great, but not for the reasons that he thinks,” the campaigner said. “Because what it has actually done is give a chance for the system to show that the advocacy that we do is both important and protected by the First Amendment.”
Sanctioning Fever: The United States, European Union, and Free Speech
At present, there is a pot-calling-the-kettle-black approach being taken by the European Union and the United States regarding the imposition of sanctions upon individuals deemed hostile to free speech. On December 23, the US State Department announced that it would bar five European citizens accused of spearheading efforts to pressure US tech giants to censor or suppress American opinions. This came after the European Union’s own tilt to sanctioning individuals accused of spreading Russian misinformation or disinformation, particularly about the Ukraine War.
Those caught in the State Department vice are former EU Commissioner for the internal market Thierry Breton, a key figure behind the Digital Services Act (DSA), Josephine Ballon and Anna-Lena von Hodenberg of the German legal aid organisation HateAid, British head of the US-based Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) Imran Ahmed, and Clare Melford, co-founder of the Global Disinformation Index (GDI).
Von Hodenberg and Ballon assisted Jewish college students sue the social network platform X over the dissemination of antisemitic content while Ahmed, in particular, has been praised for his work by the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) and Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA) on advancing social media hygiene. “He is a valuable partner in providing accurate and detailed information on how the social media algorithms have created a bent toward antisemitism and anti-Zionism, and he will remain a valuable partner,” insisted the JFNA’s head of government relations, Dennis Bernard. Given that many a policy decision by the Trump administration to withdraw from international institutions – the UN Human Rights Council comes to mind – has been based on thinly justified accusations of antisemitism, this was side splittingly comic.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio was suitably bolshie in making the announcement, calling the barred individuals “leading figures of the global censorship-industrial complex”. “For too long, ideologues in Europe have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to punish American viewpoints they oppose. The Trump Administration will no longer tolerate these egregious acts of extraterritorial censorship.”
Sarah Rogers, the US Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, had her share of stones to cast, lashing Breton for “ominously” reminding “[Elon] Musk of X’s legal obligations and ongoing ‘formal proceedings’ for alleged noncompliance with ‘illegal content’ and ‘disinformation’ requirements under the DSA.” Ahmed’s organisation was taken to task for its 2022 “Disinformation Dozen” report lacerating anti-vaccination advocates, among them the current US Secretary of Health, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
A spokesperson for GDI called the sanctions an “authoritarian attack on free speech and an egregious act of government censorship.” The Trump administration had yet again used “the full weight of the federal government to intimidate, censor, and silence voices they disagree with.” The actions were “immoral, unlawful and un-American.” French President Emmanuel Macron saw matters in terms of autonomy, calling the decision intimidatory and coercive “aimed at undermining European digital sovereignty”.
The European Union can hardly claim to be saintly on the subject of protecting free speech either. When it comes to discussing Russian policies, tolerance for its exercise shrinks. (Consider, for instance, the imposition of EU sanctions on experts associated with the Russia-based international forum, the Valdai Club.) The recent, most troubling case of Jacques Baud, a retired Swiss colonel living in Brussels who finds himself the target of an executive sanctions listing, stands out. The listing was made as part of the Russia hybrid-threats framework adopted in October 2024 (Decision 2024/2643 and Regulation 2024/2642) covering such non-military actions as the dissemination of disinformation and propaganda, cyberattacks and interference in elections. Member States are directed to take measures against “natural persons” who are involved, for instance, in “planning, directing, engaging in, directly or indirectly, supporting or otherwise facilitating the use of coordinated information manipulation and interference” in favour of Russia.
Baud, according to the EU sanctions tracker, is described as “a former Swiss army colonel and strategic analyst [and] a regular guest on pro-Russian television and radio programmes. He acts as a mouthpiece for pro-Russian propaganda and makes conspiracy theories, for example, accusing Ukraine of orchestrating its own invasion in order to join NATO.” An odd curriculum vitae to warrant an executive listing that is punitive and lacking curial assessment.
For holding and promoting such views, an asset freeze has been placed upon him within the EU jurisdiction, along with an entry and transit ban across the EU. Stranger in this whole affair is the fact that Switzerland does not subscribe to this monochrome sanctions regime. A situation of the absurd has been created: a Swiss national residing in Brussels who is effectively incapable of returning to Switzerland for expressing views no good European should have.
Attacking a viewpoint deemed unsavoury and out of step with accepted, if not dictated opinion, is the very essence of censorship. The mood of the moment is that of a bouncy militarism in Europe, a reverie of warmongering committing Member States to ever increasing defence budgets against imaginary jackboots awaiting to make their way to Paris and Brussels. Those wishing to question the Ukraine narrative in terms of history and origin, or the need for the prolongation of war, have become targets.
These formulas deny debate, endorse a police version of history, and affirm fundamentalist scripts. Stick to the script, or else. It becomes chilling to then see various countries and political entities punish those with undesirable, even unsavoury opinions. This might be a good time for the EU to drop all pretence on the subject and admit that opinions are there to be policed by the stuffy mandarins of the day. And while there is much to be said that is problematic about such restrictive, babying instruments as the UK’s Online Safety Act and the EU’s DSA, preventing activists and researchers from travelling to a country where free speech is protected seems similarly perverse.
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