Civil liberty concerns spur FAA to revise drone no-fly zones near ICE vehicles:
In January 2026, during the height of protests against immigration raids in Minneapolis, federal agents shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Good . Before even gathering all the facts , the Department of Homeland Security labeled the mother of three an "anti-ICE rioter" who "weaponized her vehicle against law enforcement" in an "act of domestic terrorism."
Days later, the feds announced a major expansion of "no-fly zones" in the name of national security. While such no-fly zones used to be about controlling aircraft, they now often focus on small drones. The expanded no-fly zones announced on January 16 prohibited such drones from flying within 3,000 lateral feet and 1,000 vertical feet of federal facilities.
But for the first time, the order extended no-fly zones to ground vehicles belonging to the Department of Homeland Security. Even while the vehicles were in motion. Even if they were unmarked. And even if their routes had not been announced.
This exceptionally ambiguous policy posed real danger to people like Rob Levine , a freelance photojournalist and commercial photographer in Minneapolis for nearly four decades. Since Levine got his remote-pilot certification and bought his first drone in 2016, he has flown a small fleet of DJI quadcopter drones to take aerial photographs and videos of Minnesota's rivers, bridges, and cities, along with crowds gathered for outdoor concerts and parades. More recently, he has documented Twin City residents protesting the increased presence of federal agents in their community.
Levine immediately stopped flying when he saw the no-fly notice. The notice said government agencies could shoot down or seize drones "deemed to pose a credible safety or security threat," and it warned of civil and even criminal penalties for drone operators.
"I saw what these federal agents were willing to do, the violence they were willing to visit upon even constitutional observers here in the Twin Cities who were just photographing what they were doing," Levine told Ars.
Good's killing had occurred just six blocks from his home. "It didn't take much imagination to think what they would do to somebody with a drone, and so for weeks I didn't go fly," he said.
A week after the no-fly zone warning, the situation in Minneapolis escalated further when Customs and Border Protection officers killed Alex Pretti , a 37-year-old intensive care nurse, after wrestling him to the ground and shooting him multiple times.
Levine wanted his drones back in the air. But when he sought guidance from the Federal Aviation Administration, the agency candidly acknowledged that the no-fly zone warning was "ambiguous" and "therefore, any flight carries the risk of inadvertent violation."
Could such a policy possibly be legal?
The FAA had previously only advised that drone pilots avoid flying near "mobile assets" operated by the Department of Defense and Department of Energy, such as naval warships and truck convoys transporting nuclear materials between US national labs. But the "notice to airmen" alert in January— NOTAM FDC 6/4375 —had created the equivalent of roving, 3,000-foot no-fly zones around federal agents' cars and other vehicles operating in cities and towns across the country. And it didn't just affect those trying to film federal agents. Because it was practically impossible to ensure compliance with the new flight restrictions, any drone pilot could be at risk during any flight.
"It created a whole lot of fear in the community," said Vic Moss , CEO and cofounder of the Drone Service Providers Alliance, a drone industry trade association based in Lakewood, Colorado. In a post on March 11 , Moss described the FAA flight restriction as posing an "impossible compliance problem" for drone operators, who could end up "ensnared inside a restricted zone with no way of knowing it."
Drone pilots in the United States must use apps such as Air Control to seek official permission to fly in controlled airspaces. Any drones larger than 0.55 pounds must be registered with the FAA and have a Remote ID module that can "squawk" the drone's identification and location at all times. That makes it easy for federal agents or authorities to see where drone operations are taking place. But the system provided no way for drone operators to avoid unmarked government vehicles in motion.
The no-fly zone restrictions were also exceptional in their length and scope. The FAA regularly issues temporary flight restrictions during natural disasters or to protect the airspace around government officials and sporting events such as professional baseball or football games . Most restrictions last just hours or days and cover specific geographic locations, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation .
But the restrictions issued on January 16, 2026, would last until October 29, 2027—21 months—while covering many federal facilities and vehicles across the entire United States.
Given these unprecedented restrictions, the Electronic Frontier Foundation joined other members of the News Media Coalition—an international organization that includes more than 50 news organizations—in sending a letter to the FAA's Office of the Chief Counsel.
The letter detailed "significant concerns regarding the FAA's January 16, 2026 sweeping and unprecedented Temporary Flight Restriction." It described the flight restrictions as violating the First Amendment by making it more difficult to record law enforcement officers. The letter also argued that the policy's ambiguity violated the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution, which guarantees the right to due process before being deprived of liberty or property by the government.
Back in Minnesota, Levine spent weeks looking for lawyers who could help him challenge the FAA flight restriction as a freelance photojournalist—but he was racing against a deadline. One law firm alerted him that he had only 60 days to file a petition regarding the FAA decision. But he couldn't find a law firm willing to back him.
"To me, this was an obviously unconstitutional rule by the FAA," Levine told Ars Technica. "Even when I was looking for a lawyer, I had a lot of sympathetic ears, but nobody offered to take the case or to even help me with it."
Levine eventually called a hotline for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press , a nonprofit in Washington, DC, that offers free legal services. The organization took the case and filed a lawsuit, designated Levine v. FAA (26-1054), with the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit on March 16.
They had barely beaten the petition deadline.
By March 16, it was common knowledge in the aviation industry that the FAA was aware of the issues and had prepared a revised version of its flight restriction notice, Moss said. But another federal agency was apparently holding up the revision. Many suspected that the agency responsible for the delay was the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
"I think anybody with more than four synapses firing at the same time can realize that this was a DHS issue," Moss said.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told Ars only that "DHS routinely coordinates with the FAA on airspace restrictions to support operational security and safety of the Department."
On April 10, Levine and his lawyers pressed ahead by filing an emergency motion seeking to temporarily suspend the FAA flight restriction until the court had a chance to review the case.
That may have expedited the government's next move. On April 15, the FAA removed the no-fly zones by replacing the sweeping flight restrictions with a "national security advisory" titled NOTAM FDC 6/2824 . The revised notice dropped all mentions of flight restrictions and criminal charges. It instead "advised" drone pilots to avoid flying near "covered mobile assets" belonging to the Department of Homeland Security and several other federal agencies.
The revised notice was intended to "clarify drone operations based on user feedback," according to an FAA statement shared with Ars. An FAA spokesperson confirmed that "the revised NOTAM removes the flight prohibition and instead advises pilots to use caution near protected operations while enabling federal security partners to assess and respond to potential threats."
Levine and his lawyers were pleased. "First and foremost, our goal was to get the restriction thrown out so that Rob [Levine] and other journalists could be up in the air again," said Grayson Clary , a staff attorney at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. "So on that front, we think this is already a victory."
But Clary still plans to press ahead with the lawsuit.
"We're cognizant that the FAA is doing this because they don't want to have to defend what they did here on the merits in front of the DC Circuit, and we are going to fight back on that tactical gamesmanship," Clary said. "We do plan to make clear to the DC Circuit that this shouldn't have happened in the first place."
The new FAA advisory wording is "a lot better than it was," but it still comes off as "too ambiguous," according to Moss at the Drone Service Providers Alliance. He suggested that the Department of Homeland Security could handle any potential drone concerns rather than making it an FAA issue.
"If there's somebody harassing them with a drone, then I think there's other ways that can be dealt with," he said.
The FAA advisory is also potentially problematic because it still creates a "chilling effect to dissuade people from taking photos and videos, particularly of immigration enforcement agents, from the air," said Sophia Cope , a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Like the earlier notice, the new advisory warns that federal agents can seize, damage, or destroy drones "deemed to pose a credible safety or security threat to covered mobile assets."
"The threats that [drones] present to the national security and mission of DHS are evolving, and the approaches to securing the locations and personnel of the Department must also evolve," the Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said. "We ask that the [drone] user community respect the security of DHS operations, personnel and facilities and refrain from operating in vicinity of known enforcement activities, and all federal facilities."
The FAA advisory cites three existing laws as giving the federal agencies authority to seize or destroy drone threats.
But those laws first require federal agencies to have performed risk-based assessments to identify specific drone threats to the covered assets. It's unclear whether agencies have done those assessments, Cope said, and therefore, "they're just disincentivizing people from engaging in lawful, First Amendment protected activity."
That chilling effect was very real for Levine while the initial flight restriction was in place. Hesitation cost him the chance to take aerial photos of protestors putting up roadblocks in his neighborhood to stop federal agents' vehicles toward the end of the US government's Operation Metro Surge . Even when a friend asked him to help take drone videos and photos of a performance art event on February 28, he had to think hard about the risks.
As he tells it, "I eventually just screwed up my courage, as little as I have, and said 'OK, I'm gonna do it.'"
(Score: 4, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Saturday May 02, @08:15PM (2 children)
Schmeagle. Laws are made to be broken, by people who have the pull to break them with impunity. Not one of the "special people"? Well, you just better hope we don't catch you violating any law, ever, even the completely arbitrary and ambiguous ones.
My University town effectively had laws against "walking while poor" - effectively they were only enforced at night, but doG forbid you might have a screwdriver, or even a swiss army knife, on your person when stopped and frisked for "walking while poor" because those are "burglar tools" and sufficient to earn you a line on the police blotter and a morning date to see the judge. Don't have $3K bail on your person? Welp, you'll be waiting "in the tank" until morning. Do have $3K bail on your person? That's a suspiciously large amount of cash for someone who was profiled as "walking while poor" to be carrying around, additional charges of "probably narcotics trafficking" now raise your bail to $30K.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by liar on Saturday May 02, @09:39PM
"Trash in the gutters and trash in the sea
Trash in the hearts of the powers that be
Freedom for all who got money to spend
Watchin the empire end"
Carsie Blanton – Empire
Noli nothis permittere te terere.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Monday May 04, @10:57AM
There's the de jure laws, the ones that are on the books, written by politicians, and argued about by lawyers. And then there's the de facto laws which control what people with guns acting under the authority of the government actually do. The USA has been learning a lot about the often extreme difference between those two sets of laws over the last couple of decades. Particularly telling is that police in the USA get approximately 1-2 days of training at most on what the laws they're supposed to be enforcing actually are, while getting a lot more official training on how to shoot people, and once they're on the force their supervisors and senior partners focus on training them on how to get away with shooting people rather than on the subtleties of what the laws are. ICE agent training is even worse by all accounts.
I'm not surprised about your university town's "laws" in that regard. A lot of times, police are tasked with keeping an area "nice", and what they mean by "nice" is (a) no poor people who aren't there to work for a rich person, and (b) no brown or black people who aren't there to work for a white person. A lot of policies are quietly geared towards this: For example, if you look at public transit service to shopping malls and similar spaces, the schedule is often every 4 hours or so, too far apart to be much use for anybody who is going there to shop, but right near the common shift changes for those who are going there to work. Why? Because they want to discourage people who aren't rich enough to own a vehicle from shopping there, as a way of keeping it "nice".
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 4, Insightful) by dioxide on Saturday May 02, @10:00PM (20 children)
>Good's killing had occurred just six blocks from his home. "It didn't take much imagination to think what they would do to somebody with a drone, and so for weeks I didn't go fly," he said.
They gonna kill you for flying your drone? Your imagination is out of control.
(Score: 5, Informative) by epitaxial on Sunday May 03, @12:23AM (19 children)
The last words of Rene Good were "I'm not mad at you" before she was executed.
That agent who murdered her has been reassigned and is still collecting a paycheck.
So yeah they would definitely shoot you dead because nothing happens.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03, @03:21AM
Just following US traditions and culture of violence: https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/us-border-agents-intentionally-stepped-front-moving-vehicles-justify-shooting-them/ [thenation.com]
I'm defending myself by shooting you.
I'm defending myself by bombing people thousands of miles away.
They deserved to die (mainly because I have more firepower than them and they're inconvenient).
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03, @08:39AM (8 children)
While advancing your false narrative you conveniently left out the part captured on video from the front vantage point where she struck said federal agent with her vehicle before he fired shots in response.
Aggravated assault with a deadly weapon on law enforcement officers has consequences.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03, @02:41PM (4 children)
Ah yes, the bit where he stepped in front of her car. Play silly games, win silly prizes.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03, @10:33PM (3 children)
Exactly. When you run from the cops you might end up dead. It's your choice. Some time before, the same fed didn't shoot and got dragged. He wasn't going to let it happen again.
I care as much about your deleted agitators as you do about someone like charlie kirk. IMO, it was a pretti good outcome, all things considered.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03, @11:04PM (1 child)
Maybe he should stop stepping in front of moving vehicles? At some point he's going to shoot one whose dead foot hits the accelerator while the dead body falls over and pulls the steering wheel in his direction.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 04, @08:31AM
He already had not stepped in front of any moving vehicle in either of the two publicized incidents -- including the one with Good.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday May 04, @12:43AM
In other words, not his first time. That was a serious failure of training too. Break a rear window and reach into a suspect's car (sounds like the suspect was facing serious charges too). What was he thinking? He's lucky that he got off so lightly that he could return to work a few months later.
(Score: 5, Informative) by khallow on Sunday May 03, @02:49PM
If we're going to play that game, let us also note that said federal agent fired those shots after being "struck" by said vehicle. And that there's no evidence of a serious injury from the contact with the car. Why should we consider their life to be in danger at the time they were shooting? And what happens to a moving vehicle where you've just killed the driver?
I find it interesting how defenders of the Good shooting argue camera viewpoints and other minutia rather than note the obvious: Officer Ross, the shooter and his fellow officers weren't following well established law enforcement procedure. Good stood in front of Good's car - that's how he got "struck" by the car in the first place. His fellow officer tried to break into the car rather than calmly deescalate the confrontation - that panicked Good in the first place.
Sure, Good acted like an idiot, but those officers acted profoundly unprofessionally and callously. Consider this alternate approach: 1) take care approaching the vehicle (don't just stroll right in front of it like Officer Ross did), 2) order the driver to turn their car off (another huge procedural fail), and 3) talk them down for an arrest or moving on. At this point, either Good is complying with lawful instructions from law enforcement or she isn't. They have plenty of options and nobody's life is at risk. Even if she races off, they have her license plate and a growing list of charges to apply.
Good would still be alive and Officer Ross wouldn't be a soccer mom murderer. It wasn't that hard.
I'll note that the Trump administration has since replaced everyone with one known exception below Trump in the decision chain for this ICE theater. The Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem was replaced in late March. The ICE Director, Todd Lyons announced he would retire at the end of May. And Border Control Commander at Large Gregory Bovino was replaced in late January. Sounds like they backhandedly agree with me on this one.
TL;DR: dial into the mothership please to replace your obsolete talking points.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by epitaxial on Sunday May 03, @07:11PM (1 child)
Notice how they refused to release the body cam footage? If the "agent" was indeed in danger then it should be clear from the video.
If there was the slightest indication the body cam footage supported their claim it would have been released immediately.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03, @10:37PM
What bodycam? The guy only filmed form his phone and didn't have one. That footage was released. Just goes to show how "informed" everyone is.
(Score: 3, Touché) by DadaDoofy on Sunday May 03, @03:10PM (8 children)
Where were you when 8 (perhaps as many as 12) people were shot and killed by ICE under Obama? Funny how it happens twice on the bad orange man's watch and suddenly it's time for a crusade.
https://ustrends.net/posts/how-many-people-were-shot-by-ice-under-obama-415664.html [ustrends.net]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday May 03, @03:44PM (4 children)
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03, @09:58PM (3 children)
Not enough?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday May 04, @12:48AM (2 children)
Indeed. ICE officers killed [wikipedia.org] 4 people in 2025. If the Obama administration were maintaining that of shooting activity, they'd have roughly 30 deaths over the administration's span.
(Score: 2) by DadaDoofy on Monday May 04, @08:36PM (1 child)
Four? Even your heavily-biased source only mentions two.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday May 05, @01:04AM
It was interesting that ICE involvement in the Ruben Ray Martinez shooting didn't come out until an FOIA request [newsweek.com] went through almost a year later. Why was that kept secret? It's also interesting in that we see the same procedural failings that we saw in the Good shooting:
Very similar situation. Driver does panicked, stupid stuff (he was among other things, driving while intoxicated) and gets shot. Meanwhile we see the same sort of poor behavior on the ICE side (HSI = Homeland Security Investigations a branch of ICE): officers standing in front of a moving vehicle, yelling vague instructions, and escalating the situation.
The Silverio Villegas González shooting [suntimes.com] has similar features.
Notice another features of these shootings: exaggeration of the injuries and threat presented by those who died. Gonzalez was "dragging" an ICE officer. In the Good shooting, the talk of Good's vehicle as a lethal weapon. And the officer who shot Martinez stated he was concerned that Martinez was committing a terrorist attack.
My take is that even though the three shooting victims acted stupidly, it's not ICE's job to shoot the stupid people. In each case, they could have structured these traffic stops in ways that don't panic stupid people.
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Sunday May 03, @07:16PM (1 child)
What about Obama?
What about her emails?
What about his laptop?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03, @10:40PM
Yea.. sorry. Your hypocrisy is getting called out. You were silent when those things happened. I know it's part of leninism to just say the "current_thing" as the party demands but we don't abide by that rule nor live in your bubble.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Thexalon on Monday May 04, @11:07AM
So fun fact: There were people out there calling for the abolition of ICE during the Obama administration, including a few organizations actively working for that goal at least as far back as 2014. They were called "radical lunatics", and told to sit down and shut up by the Powers That Be, not given any substantial media coverage, and sometimes beaten up by cops, but they were there warning about the dangers of armed government agents who were getting too much power and too little accountability for their actions, and were killing people in the performance of their duties who did not present any kind of immediate threat to anybody.
Just because your favorite media sources didn't talk about something happening does not mean that it didn't happen. Ditto for cases where it was mentioned on the news but you didn't notice it because it was mentioned once in passing or on the digital equivalent of page A25. And also cases where it was covered fairly prominently but you don't remember that it was covered because it was years ago and you didn't have any reason to care about the story.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Username on Sunday May 03, @01:51PM (8 children)
Anyone that has seen how hobby drones are used in the Russo-Ukrainian war knows exactly why law enforcement needs legal protections for shooting drones down. They already used pipes bombs against federal buildings, so the will is there. I get the kind of people writing "anti-ICE" on their rounds with magic marker to make +1 damage or something, then trying to shoot law enforcement only to hit the criminals in their custody doesn't seem like that competent of a person, but strapping a bomb to a drone is something anyone should be capable of doing. Well, I guess maybe not all people, but you would think some of these terrorists are capable of more than suicide by cop.
(Score: 4, Touché) by khallow on Sunday May 03, @03:00PM (6 children)
Obvious rebuttal: do "legal protections" protect soldiers in the Russo-Ukrainian war? We start from a broken premise that creating arbitrary exclusion zones for drones would help. But anyone who is intent on murdering federal agents won't stop just because there's an exclusion zone.
Magic marker law is no different.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 03, @10:53PM (1 child)
While it's possible to bypass, those restrictions are meant to be followed by flight apps. If you roll your own, obviously nobody can stop you. The point of the order is to make it easier to assess the situation. If the public is informed and drones are "banned", a drone flying means it's likely hostile and there's less guesswork when taking it out.
You don't really have to agree with it, but that's how it is. Obviously the subject of the article thought it was infringing and sued. Our country is such a fascist state that well.. he pled his case and won. Imagine that. I'm sure that in the EU, Russia or China it would have been so much easier.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday May 04, @12:13AM
Which wasn't the case with the unmarked ICE vehicles - the point of the story. Basically, every qualified Homeland Security (DHS) vehicle has a 3000 radius, 1000 feet high cylinder of exclusion. For covert operations, the drone operator won't be informed of the presence of the exclusion zone. This allows for portable exclusion zones to be set up without going through official channels too.
It'd be better for the federal government not to do this in the first place. That's even less fascist.
(Score: 2) by Username on Monday May 04, @10:01AM (3 children)
Let's say a drone flies at a federal census worker, like it's coming at him, and he shoots the drone down because he felt threatened. Now the drone operator is suing him for 7.2 trillion dollars because his rights to fly a drone into people was violated, and all activist prosecutors, judges, etc are backing the case. That's the issue.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Monday May 04, @11:21AM
1. Federal census workers are not typically armed in the performance of their duties. Certainly not issued weapons by the state. Why would they need a gun to knock on a door and ask a few questions about who lived there?
2. Federal census workers, like civilians, can use force for self-defense by the standard of not "they personally felt threatened" but "a reasonable person in their position would feel threatened". There's a massive difference between the two standards.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday May 04, @11:48AM (1 child)
Excellent example of a straw man. I already corrected you in my earlier reply - we are beyond this. The plaintiff in this case couldn't determine legally whether they were breaking the law. And of course, the DHS/FAA expansion of no fly zones, a typical example of government overreach.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday May 04, @11:51AM
Sorry, reply [soylentnews.org] to an AC in this thread. As an aside, it's telling who in this thread is ignorant of the actual issues of the story. The pro-Trump side isn't basking in glory.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 06, @08:15AM
In the domestic terrorist Good's case it was committing multiple felonies and other crimes immediately beforehand.
Yes "suicide by cop" still applies but at a minimum it deserves the "Instant Karma" moniker too.